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A Global Community is pertinent to current discussions and debates concerning ethnic persistence and assimilation, transnational diasporas, and nationalism."--BOOK JACKET.
This pioneering study offers a comprehensive account of Syria's key Jewish communities at an important juncture in their history that also throws light on the broader effects of modernization in the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman reforms of the mid-nineteenth century accelerated the process of opening up Syria up to European travellers and traders, and gave Syria's Jews access to European Jewish communities. The resulting influx of Western ideas led to a decline in the traditional economy, with serious consequences for the Jewish occupational structure. It also allowed for the introduction of Western education, through schools run by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, influenced the structure...
During the 1930s and 1940s, Jews in the Middle East took part in extensive debates on fascism in the public sphere. How did the rise of fascism impact the ways in which Jews in the region envisioned the past, present and future? Confronting Fascism in the Arabic Jewish Press examines Jewish discussions on the positions and identities of Jews in the Middle East within the context of multifocal debates on fascism. Focussing on the Arabic Jewish press in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, it studies the ideas of its editors and main contributors and their intellectual networks. Putting those debates within the context of social, political and national reorientations following the end of the Ottoman Empi...
"In Biblical and Rabbinical tradition, the Israelite presence in the land of Israel is not framed in terms of autochtony but rather as a conditionnal existence dependant on a covenant between the people of Israel and God. Consequently, starting with the Babylonian exile, Jewish history is conceived in terms of exile and dispersion, each era being termed an 'exile'. This article examines how exile, first bearing the negative import of punishment, and dispersion, came to be thought of as positive values, as a means of survival and proof of divine mercy, and even as a cosmic redemptive process"--
In 1840s Damascus, Aslan Farhi leads a miserable life. Despised by his wealthy father, bullied by his siblings, and humiliated by his mother, he forms a close friendship with another boy, only for him to mysteriously disappear when their relationship becomes public knowledge. Aslan is horrified when his father arranges for him to be married to the rabbi's daughter, but the ordeal of the wedding is unexpectedly lightened by the presence of an exotic dancer, Umm-Jihan, with whom he becomes entranced. But all is not as it seems and, confused and unhappy, Aslan embarks on an ill-advised relationship with an Italian monk, with disastrous consequences.
Coming of Age as Syrian Jewish Mexicans is a linguistic ethnography of Shami and Halebi Jews in contemporary Mexico City. Through a focus on language in everyday life – including narrative, humor, and Arabic and Hebrew “heritage words” - the book explores how young adults negotiate oft-stigmatized, diasporic identities amid national shifts toward neoliberalism and the transnational expansion of Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy. Accessible yet richly theorized, the book introduces linguistic anthropological concepts and guides readers through their application to audiovisual data. This innovative approach promotes empathetic understanding of a lesser-known Jewish Latin American context and opens new lines of inquiry into the phenomenon of diaspora in a rapidly changing world.
This volume brings together articles on the cultural, religious, social and commercial interactions among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the medieval and early modern periods. Written by leading scholars in Jewish studies, Islamic studies, medieval history and social and economic history, the contributions to this volume reflect the profound influence on these fields of the volume’s honoree, Professor Mark R. Cohen.
Jewish culture places a great deal of emphasis on texts and their means of transmission. At various points in Jewish history, the primary mode of transmission has changed in response to political, geographical, technological, and cultural shifts. Contemporary textual transmission in Jewish culture has been influenced by secularization, the return to Hebrew and the emergence of modern Yiddish, and the new centers of Jewish life in the United States and in Israel, as well as by advancements in print technology and the invention of the Internet. Volume XXXI of Studies in Contemporary Jewry deals with various aspects of textual transmission in Jewish culture in the last two centuries. Essays in ...
"This book provides a rather unusual view of the Syrian Jewish community in that while ostensibly dealing with the appointment and dismissal of chief rabbis between 1744 and 1914 it in fact considers the power struggles within the community in the context of the new secularity that occupied centre stage in the community politics of the period. The story begins with the appointment of Rabbi Zedaqa Hossein as chief rabbi of Baghdad and concludes with the dismissal of Rabbi David Papo from his position in the same community after the revolution of the 'Young Turks'. The book relates these affairs, together with the disputes and controversies that accompanied them, against a background of little-known phenomena in Jewish society, among them crime, power struggles, book-burning, conversions, and even assaults and assassination attempts on rabbis. Using a wide range of testimonies gleaned from Ottoman Jewish, Arabic, and European sources, Yaron Harel paints a colourful picture of the fabric of Jewish society, very different from the commonly accepted image of Jewish communities in the Fertile Crescent:
Yaron Harel has constructed a dramatic story of how eleven chief rabbis all became the subject of controversy and were subsequently dismissed. This took place against a background of crime and licentiousness rarely documented in the context of Jewish society. Set firmly in the social and political developments of the time, this colourful picture is very different from the commonly accepted image of Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire.