Dress and Jewelry

A shared wardrobe. In Baghdad, Istanbul, or a village in the Atlas Mountains, Jewish clothing usually followed local fashion. In Morocco's Berber regions, Jewish women dressed much like Muslim Berber women, while their headdresses remained distinctively Jewish. Kurdish Jews wore the same styles as their neighbors, often in finer fabrics.

Rules on dress. In parts of the Islamic world, Jews and Christians lived as dhimmis, protected non‑Muslim minorities with set rights and limits. A text known as the Pact of Umar, whose present form scholars date to about the ninth century, told non‑Muslims not to imitate Muslim dress. Enforcement varied greatly by place and period, and rulers in medieval Christian Europe also imposed distinguishing dress or badges on Jews. A modern sourcebook notes that such rules were often ignored, yet they could also grow stricter, and some remained in force in Yemen into the twentieth century. In Tehran in 1896 and 1897, an attempt to force Jews to wear a distinctive patch ended when the Shah stopped it.

Rules that applied to everyone. Ottoman law required all men, of every religion, to wear the fez from 1829. The Turkish Republic then banned the fez in 1925.

Reading a garment

Dress often signaled a woman's stage of life. In Salonica, married Sephardic women wore the kofya, a headdress with a long silk hair tube, until about 1940. Across the Ottoman Empire, jewelry showed whether a woman was married, and it formed part of her dowry.

Some clothing accompanied a woman for life. In Sana'a, a ceremonial dress called the lulwi, worn after childbirth, could become a woman's burial garment.

Morocco

City women wore the bata, a skirt called the saya, and a shawl. Men wore wide trousers, a waistcoat, a silk belt, and the hooded jellaba. For celebrations, women wore the keswa el kbira, a velvet “great dress” embroidered in gold that families trace to Spain. In Tetouan, until about 1950, bride and groom wore a shroud tunic beneath their wedding clothes.

Yemen

In the nineteenth century Jewish silversmiths made most of Yemen's silver jewelry, famous for filigree and tiny granules, worn by Jewish and Muslim women alike. Jewish embroiderers in Sana'a made festive leggings worn only by Jewish women in Yemen's cities. A 1930s girl's dress covered with cowrie shells was meant to protect a child with smallpox.

Ottoman Sephardic lands

Men and women wore the entari, a long robe shared with neighbors of other faiths. Outdoors, women wore a ferace cloak and a veil. By the late nineteenth century many families mixed alaturka (Ottoman) and alafranka (European) styles, saving Ottoman dress for Shabbat and holidays. Treasured bridal gowns were sometimes remade into Torah ark curtains.

Iraq

In Baghdad, Jewish women went out wrapped in an izar with a fine black horsehair face veil, while Christian women left their faces uncovered. Baghdad styles blended imported and local fashion. The Laura Kadoorie School for Girls taught dressmaking and embroidery.

Iran

A bridal jacket from Isfahan glows with silver tinsel embroidery on silk velvet. After the Shah visited Paris in 1873, a short, flared skirt resembling a ballet tutu came into fashion, as an outfit from Mashhad shows. Jewish women peddlers sold jewelry and fabrics to Muslim households, and Jews took part in Iran's nineteenth century silk trade.

Bukhara (Central Asia)

Bukharan Jews were known as dyers and traders of ikat, silk woven from threads dyed in patterns before weaving. Dyeing was considered a lowly craft because it stained the hands, yet coats such as the kaltachak were lined with dazzling ikat. Mourning cloaks avoided bright colors.

Kurdistan

Men wore suits of handwoven wool; women wore a long underdress, a vest, a coat, and and wide trousers. Women sewed for the family until male tailors with sewing machines took over. In Sandor, a bride named Farha Kirma made her wedding dress with her father.

Tunisia, Libya, Algeria

Until the early twentieth century, a Jewish bride in Tunis wore trousers as part of her outfit. In Djerba, women wore a distinctive asymmetric chemise. In Algeria, Jewish women kept an older ensemble for ceremonies until they too adopted European styles.

Makers and markets. Yemen's Jewish silversmiths crafted jewelry and dagger sheaths for Muslim clients and ritual objects for Jewish ones. Some pieces, inscribed in Hebrew and Arabic, name both the ruler and the craftsman. In Iran, Islamic law treated fees for working gold and silver as a kind of usury, so non‑Muslims sometimes filled the trade. After most of Yemen's Jews moved to Israel in 1949 and 1950, the craft declined in Yemen, and Yemenite artisans brought it to Israel, including to the Bezalel art school.

Jewelry that protects. Some necklaces held an amulet case. A groom's outfit from Zakho, in Kurdistan, bears protective diamond patterns. (See our Hamsa explainer.)

Modern times. From the nineteenth century, European clothing spread through cities. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, founded in 1860, opened schools across the region, and girls' lessons in the Ottoman lands included sewing and embroidery. In Moroccan cities, girls often wore European made dresses while elders kept traditional clothing. Today, some families wear heirloom or traditional garments again at henna parties and weddings.

Common misconceptions

• “Jews always dressed differently.” Most of the time they wore local styles. Distinctive details varied by place and period.
• “Dress rules were the same everywhere.” They were enforced unevenly, and some laws, like the Ottoman fez rule, applied to all.
• “Traditional dress is a costume.” These garments were real clothing, often family treasures.
• “Filigree was only for Jews.” Jewish silversmiths in Yemen made jewelry for Jewish and Muslim women alike.

In the public school classroom

• Use museum objects as primary sources: ask students what a garment's materials, wear, and decoration reveal about its owner.
• Compare dress across Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities in one city, and discuss shared and distinct features.
• Read the Pact of Umar excerpt (Fordham) with care, alongside evidence of how unevenly such rules were applied.
• Do not hold dress up or costume activities that turn cultures into costumes; study images and objects instead.

In Jewish schools and communities

• Invite families to bring a garment, photo, or piece of jewelry and tell its story.
• Visit the Magnes Collection, the Jewish Museum, or ANU online, and research one object together.
• Read Shoham's Bangle with young children and discuss heirlooms.
• Explore the Sephardi & Mizrahi Education Toolkit for heritage ideas all year.

At home and with family

• Ask relatives: What did your grandparents wear? Is there an heirloom with a story?
• Photograph and label family jewelry and textiles, noting who wore them and where.
• Record an elder's memories and share them with JIMENA's oral history project.

Watch and listen

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From Distinctions, JIMENA's journal

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