Books

Rahamo, 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.

A study of Jews and conversos in fifteenth and sixteenth century Spain, arguing that converso thinkers anticipated key ideas of modern secular and critical thought.

An illustrated volume of essays, edited by anthropologist Shalva Weil, on the synagogues, rituals, art, and life cycle traditions of India's Bene Israel, Cochin, and Baghdadi Jewish communities.

A multivolume series of scholarly studies on contacts between Jews and Persian culture from antiquity through the modern era, including language, religion, literature, and Judeo Persian texts.

A biography of the seventeenth century rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, who led the Jewish community of Dutch Recife in Brazil and later served in Amsterdam during the era of Sabbatai Zevi and Spinoza.

The major work of Elijah Benamozegh, the nineteenth century rabbi of Livorno, which argues that Judaism holds a universal message for all humanity, centered on the Noahide laws and drawing deeply on Kabbalah.

A collection of scholarly essays on relations between Jews and Muslims, with particular attention to Yemen, the Arab world, and Jewish life under Islam across several historical periods.

Traces how young Mizrahi Israelis from Jerusalem's Musrara neighborhood, most of them of Moroccan origin, formed the Black Panthers in 1971 and used street protest to force the country to confront poverty and discrimination against Jews from Arab lands.

A study of the bourekas films, popular Israeli comedies of the 1960s and 1970s about tensions between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Israelis, arguing that they draw on the traditions of Yiddish shtetl literature.

A history and personal account by a former leader of Sudan's small Jewish community, tracing its origins under Ottoman Egyptian rule, its life in Khartoum and Omdurman, and its dispersal after independence.

Explores Jerusalem’s Old City under nineteenth-century Ottoman rule, focusing on its Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities, including Sephardic Jews, and the social, economic, and urban changes that shaped daily life.

A study of the books of North African Jews from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, tracing how manuscripts and printed books were made, traded, and read in networks linking Fez and Tunis to Livorno, Salonica, and Jerusalem.