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 BookReligion & Philosophy
The Essential Pele Yoetz: An Encyclopedia of Ethical Jewish Living
by Rabbi Eliezer Papo, translated by Marc D. AngelAn English translation of selections from Pele Yoetz, the classic ethical work by the nineteenth century Bulgarian Sephardic rabbi Eliezer Papo, arranged alphabetically by topic.
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The Familiar
by Leigh BardugoA historical fantasy novel set in sixteenth century Madrid about Luzia Cotado, a scullery maid of hidden Jewish ancestry whose secret gift for miracles draws her into court intrigue and the shadow of the Inquisition.
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The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage
by Loolwa KhazzoomAn anthology of personal essays by Jewish women with roots in North Africa and the Middle East, reflecting on identity, family, feminism, racism, and belonging within Ashkenazi centered Jewish communities and beyond.
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The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture
by Robert BrodyA history of the Babylonian geonim, the heads of the great rabbinic academies in Iraq from the seventh to eleventh centuries, and their role in shaping Jewish law and medieval Jewish culture.
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The Girl from the Garden: A Haunting Persian Family Saga of Desire and Betrayal in Historic Iran
by Parnaz ForoutanA novel set in a Jewish community in Kermanshah, Iran, in the early twentieth century, about a family torn apart when a childless wife's husband takes a second wife, recalled by a descendant in Los Angeles.
Buy BookChildren’s & Young Adult Books
The Henna Helper
by Tami Lehman-Wilzig (Author), Yinon Ptahia (Illustrator)A picture book in which Gali, a girl from a Yemenite family, questions her cousin's henna ceremony until helping her grandmother prepare it teaches her to treasure her heritage.
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The History of the Jews of Italy
by Cecil RothA history of the Jews of Italy from Roman times to the twentieth century, covering the ghettos, Renaissance cultural life, emancipation, and the Sephardic refugees who settled there.
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The Holocaust and North Africa
by Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya SteinAn edited collection of scholarly essays and translated primary sources on how Vichy French, Italian Fascist, and Nazi rule affected Jews and Muslims across North Africa during World War II, including labor camps and racial laws.
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The Jewish Center of Culture in the Ottoman Empire (History of Jewish Literature, Volume 5, Part Six)
by Israel Zinberg (Author), Bernard Martin (Translator)A volume of Israel Zinberg's classic history of Jewish literature, translated into English, surveying Hebrew writing in the Ottoman Empire, including Safed mysticism, poetry, rabbinic scholarship, and the Sabbatean movement.
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The Jewish Martyrs of Rhodes and Cos
by Hizkia M. FrancoA firsthand account by a community leader from Rhodes describing the 1944 Nazi deportation of the Jews of Rhodes and Kos to Auschwitz and the fate of the deportees.
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The Jewish parrot and other Judeo-Spanish Tales
by Aude Samama, François AzarA bilingual English and Ladino collection of illustrated Judeo Spanish folktales for ages 6 to 12, sharing the humor and wisdom of Ottoman Sephardic Jews, beginning with an Istanbul merchant's Jewish parrot.
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The Jewish Sermon in 14th-Century Spain: The Derashot of R. Joshua ibn Shu’eib
by Carmi HorowitzA study of the fourteenth century Spanish rabbi Joshua ibn Shu'eib and his sermons, examining Jewish preaching, biblical interpretation, and Kabbalah in medieval Spain.