Longing and Belonging : Jews in the Modern Islamic World.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berg, Nancy.

Contributor:

Danon, Dina.

Series:

Jewish Culture and Contexts Series

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (287 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025.

Summary:

This volume explores the history of Jewish life and experience in the modern Islamic worldLonging and Belonging investigates the lives of Jews among Muslims in the modern age, both inside and outside the Ottoman Empire and after its demise. Here, modern Jewish protagonists are revealed as active participants in an expansive Islamic civilization, reflecting a mutuality and cross-fertilization in the region that raises new lines of inquiry and which offers enduring lessons for the world today. This collection both foregrounds the experiences of Jewish communities that have long been relegated to the margins of historical and literary studies and, critically, uses these experiences to complicate prevailing narratives from both Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies. By following communities from the coffeeshops of Cairo to the villages of Yemen, from the local marriage market in Izmir to the global commerce of the Sassoons, readers gain intimate insight into a world that resists a simple understanding of the modern Islamic world and of the place of Jews within it. Just as much as the Sephardi and Mizrahi experience complicates prevailing paradigms in the study of Jewish modernity, so too does it enrich understandings of modernity across Muslim societies. The volume tells a story of longing, belonging, and longing to belong, of multiple affinities in a world that no longer exists.Contributors: Esra Almas, Nancy E. Berg, Dina Danon, Keren Dotan, Annie Greene, Alma Rachel Heckman, Hadar Feldman Samet, Joseph Sassoon, Edwin Seroussi, Alon Tam, Alan Verskin, Mark Wagner.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

PART I Social Class

Chapter 1. Family Archives in Writing the History of Arab Jews

Chapter 2 Inside Coffeehouse al-Sharq and the Lemon Gardens

PART II Gender

Chapter 3. The Capital Bride: Dowries, Trousseaus, and Modernity in the Eastern Sephardi Diaspora

Chapter 4 The Laws of Women and the Insecurities of Men

PART III National Identity

Chapter 5. Assessing Western Impact on Middle Eastern Jewish Modernity

Chapter 6 Nationalism, Anti-Zionism, and Ta’ayush

PART IV Creativity

Chapter 7. The Predicament of Rabbinical Haskalah in the Islamic World

Chapter 8 A Murder Ballad Between Yemen and Israel

Chapter 9 Sanctity and Celebrity

PART V Memory

Chapter 10. Intergenerational Memories of Sabbatian Women’s Private Sphere in the Late Ottoman Era

Chapter 11 Literary Afterlife

Contributors

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-5128-2712-6

OCLC:

1454607484