Books

Books 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.

  • History & Nonfiction

    Exile in the Maghreb: Jews under Islam, Sources and Documents

    by Paul B. Fenton; David Littman
    A collection of translated sources and documents on the status and treatment of Jews in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia under Muslim rule from the medieval period to the twentieth century.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa

    by Emily Benichou Gottreich; Daniel J. Schroeter
    A collection of scholarly essays on the Jews of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, covering religion, language, gender, colonialism, music, and migration from the medieval era to the twentieth century.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    The Jews of North Africa during the Second World War

    by Michel Abitbol
    A study of the Jews of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia under Vichy French rule and German occupation in World War Two, examining anti Jewish laws, internment, and the impact of the Allied landings.
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  • Children’s & Young Adult Books

    The Rabbi’s Cat

    by Joann Sfar
    A graphic novel set in 1930s Algeria in which a rabbi's cat gains the power of speech and questions faith, love, and Jewish life among Algiers' Jews, Arabs, and French colonists.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Undesirables: A Holocaust Journey to North Africa

    by Aomar Boum, Illustrated by Nadjib Berber
    A graphic novel grounded in archival research that follows Hans Frank, a German Jewish journalist who flees the Nazis and is interned in Vichy labor camps in the Algerian Sahara, revealing the little known Holocaust history of North Africa.
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