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 and Essays

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Explore scholarly articles, historical analyses, and thought provoking essays examining the histories, cultures, identities, and experiences of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities across the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond.

Such is Rachel

by Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff, The Atlantic Monthly

Kuzari

by Yehuda Halevi

The Book of Beliefs and Opinions

by Saadia Gaon

Epistle to Yemen - Iggeret Teiman

by Maimonides

The Unspoken Language of Israeli Politics

by Nissim Mizrachi, Sapir Journal

The Farhud, My Father, and Me

by Irit Dallal Zalayet, Distinctions

Books

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Explore a curated collection of historical scholarship, memoirs, literature, and contemporary works illuminating the rich histories, diverse cultures, and lived experiences of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews across the Middle East, North Africa, and the global diaspora.

Children’s & Young Adult Books

The Promise

by Bridget Hodder and Fawzia Gilani-Williams

During World War II, the rising threat of Nazi power begins to encroach on the peaceful coexistence of two families living in Morocco. Two boys — Jacob, who is Jewish, and Hassan, who is Muslim — are close friends with sensitive souls. They spend their mornings helping their families before coming together to play in Jacob’s magnificent family garden. Both of their families tell them that “a garden is a prayer” and “also a promise.”

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Children’s & Young Adult Books

Golden Threads

by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Haitham Haddad, Hagar Ophir

Rachelle is living a golden life. She and her family live in Fès, Morocco in the 1920s, surrounded by friends, family, and a close-knit community. They are part of a small, close-knit Jewish community, and they can practice their religion in comfort while maintaining warm relationships with Muslim friends and associates.

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Memoirs & Biographies

Leaving Iran: Between Migration and Exile

by Farideh Goldin

Farideh Goldin delivers Leaving Iran, a combined memoir of two narratives of the Jewish experience of the Iranian Revolution and its aftermath.

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History & Nonfiction

Farewell, Aleppo: My Father, My People, and Their Long Journey Home

by Claudette E. Sutton

Farewell, Aleppo: My Father, My People, and Their Long Journey Home, by Claudette E. Sutton is a story of a not-too-distant past when all religions lived and worked together, ignoring their differences. But it is also the story of how times changed and Syrian Jews faced persecution, resulting in the disappearance of a two-thousand-year-old Jewish community that had once thrived in Syria. F

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History & Nonfiction

Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in A

by Jason Sion Mokhtarian

Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests examines the impact of the Persian Sasanian context on the Babylonian Talmud, perhaps the most important corpus in the Jewish sacred canon. What impact did the Persian Zoroastrian Empire, as both a real historical force and an imaginary interlocutor, have on rabbinic identity and authority as expressed in the Talmud?

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Memoirs & Biographies

My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq

by Ariel Sabar

In My Father’s Paradise, journalist Ariel Sabar has crafted a fascinating and moving account of both the Jews of Kurdistan and of his relationship with his father. Sabar embarks on this personal journey of reconstructing his father’s life and history when he himself becomes a father to a son. Sabar’s father, Yona Sabar, is a professor specializing in Aramaic at UCLA, one of the few people alive today for whom Aramaic is the mother tongue.

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Journals and Digital Collections

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Discover community journals, digital archives, and collections offering access to historical documents, scholarship, primary sources, and cultural resources that deepen our understanding of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish life across generations.