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

    Beyond Suspicion: The Moral Clash between Rootedness and Progressive Liberalism

    by Nissim Mizrachi
    A sociological study, drawing on research among Mizrahi and working class Israelis, that argues progressive liberal thought misreads communities rooted in tradition and religion and proposes a less suspicious way of understanding them.
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  • Memoirs & Biographies

    Beyond the Rivers of Babylon: My journey of optimism and resilience in a turbulent century

    by Joseph Samuels
    A memoir by Joseph Samuels, who survived the 1941 Farhud as a child in Baghdad, escaped Iraq at nineteen, served in the Israeli navy, and built a life in Montreal and Los Angeles.
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  • Children’s & Young Adult Books

    Buen Shabat, Shabbat Shalom

    by Sarah Aroeste (Author), Ayesha L. Rubio (Illustrator)
    A bilingual Ladino and English picture book for young children that follows a family's Sabbath from preparation to Havdalah, introducing Judeo Spanish words and Sephardic customs.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism

    by Alanna E. Cooper
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Bukharan Jews in the 20th Century: History, Experience and Narration

    by Ingeborg Baldauf; Moshe Gammer; Thomas Loy
    A collection of essays on the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia in the twentieth century, drawing on history, oral narratives, and personal experience under Soviet rule and after emigration.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Change Within Tradition Among Jewish Women in Libya

    by Rachel Simon
    A study of Jewish women in Libya during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining education, work, family, and religious life as Ottoman, Italian, and modern influences brought change.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Collectivization and Social Engineering: Soviet Administration and the Jews of Uzbekistan, 1917-1939

    by Zeev Levin
    A history of Soviet policies toward the Jews of Uzbekistan from 1917 to 1939, focusing on collectivization, agricultural settlement, and efforts to reshape Bukharian Jewish society.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Confronting the Loss of a Baby: A Personal and Jewish Perspective

    by Yamin Levy
    A guide by Rabbi Yamin Levy, written after his own family's loss, that draws on Jewish law, tradition, and personal experience to help parents and caregivers mourn miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death.
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  • Religion & Philosophy

    Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel

    by Samuel Usque
    A sixteenth century Portuguese prose work in which three shepherds recount Jewish history and suffering from biblical times to the Inquisition, written in Ferrara to encourage former conversos to return to Judaism.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Contemporary Sephardic Identity in the Americas: An Interdisciplinary Approach

    by Margalit Bejarano
    A collection of interdisciplinary essays on Sephardic communities in Latin America and the United States, exploring language, religion, literature, migration, and identity.
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  • History & Nonfiction

    Conversos on Trial: The Inquisition in Ciudad Real

    by Haim Beinart
    A study of the Inquisition's trials of conversos in Ciudad Real in the fifteenth century, reconstructing the accused's religious practices, families, and community life from trial records.
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  • Fiction & Literature

    Cov­er Me With My Izar

    by Nora Houri-Haim
    A novel told in linked stories that follows several generations of an Iraqi Jewish family from Baghdad through the Farhud and mass emigration to Israel, and into the lives of Israeli born grandchildren.
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