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 BookChildren’s & Young Adult Books
Osnat and Her Dove: The True Story of the World’s First Female Rabbi
by Sigal Samuel (Author), Vali Mintzi (Illustrator)A picture book about Osnat Barazani of seventeenth century Kurdistan, who led a yeshiva in Mosul and is remembered as the first female rabbi, retelling the legend of her and a dove.
Buy BookHistory & Nonfiction
Pādyāvand
by Amnon NetzerA series of scholarly volumes in English and Persian, edited by Amnon Netzer, publishing research on Judeo Persian language, literature, and the history and culture of the Jews of Iran.
Buy BookFiction & Literature
People of the Book
by Geraldine BrooksA novel following a book conservator restoring the Sarajevo Haggadah in 1996, interwoven with imagined episodes from the manuscript's journey through medieval Spain, Venice, Vienna, and World War II Sarajevo.
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Persian Brides
by Dorit RabinyanA novel by an Israeli author of Iranian Jewish descent, set in a Jewish village in Persia in the early twentieth century, following two teenage cousins, Flora and Nazie, through love, abandonment, and community gossip, translated from Hebrew.
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Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce
by Sarah Abrevaya SteinA history of the Jewish merchants who ran the global ostrich feather trade before World War I, following networks linking South Africa, North Africa and the Sahara, London, and New York, and the trade's sudden collapse.
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Rabbi Haim David Halevy: Gentle Scholar and Courageous Thinker
by Marc D. AngelA biography and study by Rabbi Marc D. Angel of Rabbi Haim David Halevy, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, examining his responsa on modern life and his humane, open approach to Jewish law.
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Rabbinic Creativity in the Modern Middle East
by Zvi ZoharA study of how Sephardic and Middle Eastern rabbis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries responded to modernity in their legal rulings, showing creative and often flexible approaches to questions of halakha.
Buy BookReligion & Philosophy
Rambam’s Perush ha-Mishna
by Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, 1135–1204)Maimonides' twelfth century commentary on the entire Mishnah, written in Judeo Arabic, which explains each law and includes his famous introductions, the Eight Chapters on ethics, and the Thirteen Principles of Faith.
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Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women: Sweetening the Spirits, Healing the Sick
by Isaac Jack Levy; Rosemary ZumwaltA study of the healing rituals, folk remedies, and protective practices preserved by Sephardic women from Ottoman Judeo Spanish communities, drawing on interviews and recounting how these traditions addressed illness and the evil eye.
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Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza
by Adina Hoffman and Peter ColeThe story of the Cairo Geniza, the storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue whose centuries of discarded papers, retrieved by Solomon Schechter and other scholars, revealed the daily life of medieval Jews across the Islamic world.
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Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria
by Sarah Abrevaya SteinA history of the Jews of the Algerian Sahara, especially the M'zab, showing how French colonial law classified them apart from northern Algerian Jews and denied them full citizenship until the end of French rule.
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Saliman and the Memory Stone
by Erica Lyons (Author), Yinon Ptahia (Illustrator)A picture book for young children about Saliman, a Yemenite Jewish boy preparing to leave Yemen for Israel, who brings only a small stone holding the memories and people he loves.