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.
Buy BookFiction & Literature
Aleppo Tales
by Haim SabatoA work of fiction by Israeli author Haim Sabato that gathers tales of the rabbis, scholars, and pious families of Jewish Aleppo, evoking the learning, faith, and community life of Syrian Jewry.
Buy BookChildren’s & Young Adult Books
I Share My Name
by Esther Levy Chehebar (Author), Luisa Galstyan (Illustrator)A picture book in which young Jojo, from a Syrian Jewish family in Brooklyn, wonders why so many cousins share his name and learns the Sephardic custom of naming children after living grandparents.
Buy BookFiction & Literature
In Darkness Striving
by Yehuda BurlaRahamo, a Syrian Jew living in early twentieth-century Damascus, offering a literary portrayal of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish life, identity, and culture in the Arab world before the mass migrations of the mid-twentieth century.
Buy BookHistory & Nonfiction
Syrian Jewry in Transition, 1840-1880
by Yaron HarelA history of the Jewish communities of Damascus, Aleppo, and Beirut between 1840 and 1880, covering the Damascus blood libel, Ottoman reforms, European influence, economic change, and shifting communal leadership.
Buy BookHistory & Nonfiction
The Collected Works of Hakham Dr. José Faur
by Joseph Faur and Eli ShaubiA gathering of writings by Hakham José Faur, the Syrian Sephardic rabbi and scholar, on Jewish law, Maimonides, rabbinic interpretation, and the humanistic intellectual tradition of Sephardic Judaism.