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

    Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas: Hispanic Moroccan Jews and Their Globalizing Community

    by Aviad Moreno
    A history of the Hispanic Moroccan Jews of northern Morocco's former Spanish zone, following their twentieth century migrations to Venezuela, Spain, Israel, and beyond and the transnational community ties they maintained.
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  • 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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  • Poetry

    Jews

    by Sami Shalom Chetrit
    An English selection of three decades of poetry by Sami Shalom Chetrit, a Moroccan born poet raised in Ashdod, confronting Mizrahi marginalization, the loss of Arabic, and Israeli politics.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco

    by Aomar Boum
    An anthropological study, based on interviews across four generations in southern Morocco, of how Moroccan Muslims remember, imagine, and talk about the Jewish neighbors who emigrated after 1948.
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  • Fiction & Literature

    Sunburnt Faces

    by Shimon Adaf
    Follows Ori Elhayani as a girl in a southern Israeli town and again as a writer in her thirties, weaving childhood loss, a spell of muteness, and a moment she believes is God speaking through a television into a meditation on memory, faith, and storytelling.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1862-1962

    by Michael M. Laskier
    A history of the Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in Morocco from 1862 to 1962, examining how French Jewish education reshaped Moroccan Jewish society, its relations with Muslim neighbors and colonial authorities, and its path toward emigration.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    The Jews in Sharifian Morocco: Aspects of Jewish life in Morocco from the 16th Century to Modern

    by Shalom Bar-Asher
    A Hebrew language reader of chapters and sources on Jewish history in Morocco from the sixteenth century to modern times, covering community life, relations with the Sharifian rulers, and later developments.
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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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  • History & Nonfiction

    The Language and Culture of the Jews of Sefrou, Morocco: An Ethnolinguistic Study

    by Norman A. Stillman
    An ethnolinguistic study of the Judeo Arabic spoken by the Jews of Sefrou, Morocco, combining grammar, recorded texts, and a glossary with insight into the community's material culture and daily life.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    The Mellah Society: Jewish Community Life in Sherifian Morocco

    by Shlomo Deshen
    Argues against the popular image of medieval Islamic Spain as a model of tolerance, presenting evidence of religious restrictions and violence faced by Christians and Jews under Muslim rule in al Andalus.
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  • Children’s & Young Adult Books

    The Story of the Baba Sali

    by Sarah Feldbrand
    A children's biography of Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira, the Baba Sali, the revered Moroccan kabbalist who later lived in Netivot, Israel, told through stories of his piety and kindness.
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