Download or read book The Crypto Jewish Mashhadis written by Hilda Nissimi and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the little-known story of a fascinating crypto-Jewish community through two centuries and three continents. Beginning as a precarious settlement of a few families in mid-18th-century Mashhad, an Islamic holy city in northern Iran, the community grew into a closely-knit group in response to their forced conversion to Islam in 1839. Muslim hostility and a culture of memory sustained by intra-communal marriages reinforced their separate religious identity, vesting it in strong family and communal loyalty. Mashhadi women became the main agents of the cultural transmission of communal identity and achieved social roles and high status uncharacteristic for contemporary Jewish and Muslim communities. The Mashhadis maintained a double identity, upholding Islam in public while tenaciously holding onto their Jewish identity in secret. The exodus from Mashhad after 1946 relocated the communal center to Tehran, later to Israel, and, after the Khomeini revolution, to New York. The relationship between the formation and retention of communal identity and memory practices - with interconnected issues of religion and gender - draws upon existing research on other crypto-faith communities, such as the Judeoconversos, the Moriscos, and the French Protestants, who, through the special blend of memory-faith and ethnicity, emerged strengthened from their underground period. For the immigration period, the author challenges the old paradigm that "modernity and religion are mutually exclusive." The book also explores the sometimes uncomfortable yet intimate relationships that exist between seemingly incompatible ways of seeing the past, both secular and religious.
Download or read book The Crypto Jewish Mashhadis written by Hilda Nissimi and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the little-known story of a fascinating crypto-Jewish community through two centuries and three continents. Beginning as a precarious settlement of a few families in mid-18th-century Mashhad, an Islamic holy city in northern Iran, the community grew into a closely-knit group in response to their forced conversion to Islam in 1839. Muslim hostility and a culture of memory sustained by intra-communal marriages reinforced their separate religious identity, vesting it in strong family and communal loyalty. Mashhadi women became the main agents of the cultural transmission of communal identity and achieved social roles and high status uncharacteristic for contemporary Jewish and Muslim communities. The Mashhadis maintained a double identity, upholding Islam in public while tenaciously holding onto their Jewish identity in secret. The exodus from Mashhad after 1946 relocated the communal center to Tehran, later to Israel, and, after the Khomeini revolution, to New York. The relationship between the formation and retention of communal identity and memory practices - with interconnected issues of religion and gender - draws upon existing research on other crypto-faith communities, such as the Judeoconversos, the Moriscos, and the French Protestants, who, through the special blend of memory-faith and ethnicity, emerged strengthened from their underground period. For the immigration period, the author challenges the old paradigm that "modernity and religion are mutually exclusive." The book also explores the sometimes uncomfortable yet intimate relationships that exist between seemingly incompatible ways of seeing the past, both secular and religious.
Download or read book Juggling Identities written by Seth D. Kunin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juggling Identities is an extensive ethnography of the crypto-Jews who live deep within the Hispanic communities of the American Southwest. Critiquing scholars who challenge the cultural authenticity of these individuals, Seth D. Kunin builds a solid link between the crypto-Jews of New Mexico and their Spanish ancestors who secretly maintained their Jewish identity after converting to Catholicism, offering the strongest evidence yet of their ethnic and religious origins. Kunin adopts a unique approach to the lives of modern crypto-Jews, concentrating primarily on their understanding of Jewish tradition and the meaning they ascribe to ritual. He illuminates the complexity of this community, in which individuals and groups perform the same practice in diverse ways. Kunin supplements his ethnographic research with broader theories concerning the nature of identity and memory, which is especially applicable to crypto-Jews, whose culture resides mainly in memory. Kunin's work has wider implications, not only for other forms of crypto-Judaism (such as that found in the former Soviet Union) but also for the study of Judaism's fluid nature, which helps adherents adapt to new circumstances and knowledge. Kunin draws fascinating comparisons between the intricate ancestry of crypto-Jews and those of other ethnic communities living in the United States.
Download or read book The Faith of Fallen Jews written by David N. Myers and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From his first book, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, to his well-known volume on Jewish memory, Zakhor, to his treatment of Sigmund Freud in Freud's Moses, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932-2009) earned recognition as perhaps the greatest Jewish historian of his day, whose scholarship blended vast erudition, unfettered creativity, and lyrical beauty. This volume charts his intellectual trajectory by bringing together a mix of classic and lesser-known essays from the whole of his career. The essays in this collection, representative of the range of his writing, acquaint the reader with his research on early modern Spanish Jewry and the experience of crypto-Jews, varied reflections on Jewish history and memory, and Yerushalmi-s enduring interest in the political history of the Jews. Also included are a number of little-known autobiographical recollections, as well as his only published work of fiction.
Download or read book Concealed written by Esther Amini and published by eBookIt.com. This book was released on 2020 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Esther Amini grew up in Queens, New York, during the free-wheeling 1960s. She also grew up in a Persian-Jewish household, the American- born daughter of parents who had fled Mashhad, Iran. In CONCEALED she tells the story of being caught between these two worlds: the dutiful daughter of tradition-bound parents who hungers for more self-determination than tradition allows. Exploring the roots of her father's deep silences and explosive temper, her mother's flamboyance and flights from home, and her own sense of indebtedness to her two Iranian-born brothers, Amini uncovers the story of her parents' early years in Mashhad, Iran's holiest Muslim city; the little known history and persecution of Mashhad's underground Jews; the incident that steeled her mother's resolve to leave; and her parents' arduous journey to the United States, where they found themselves facing a new threat to their traditions: the threat of freedom. Determined to protect his only daughter from corruption, Amini's father prohibits talk, books, higher education, and tries to push her into an early Persian marriage. Can she resist? Should she? Focused intently on what she stands to gain, Amini eventually comes to see what she also stands to lose: a family and community bound together by food, celebrations, sibling escapades, and unexpected acts of devotion by parents to whom she feels invisible. In this poignant, funny, entertaining and uplifting memoir, Amini documents with keen eye, quick wit, and warm heart, how family members build, buoy, wound, and save one another across generations; how lives are shaped by the demands and burdens of loyalty and legacy; and how she rose to the challenge of deciding what to keep and what to discard.
Download or read book The Jews of North Africa written by Sarah Taieb-Carlen and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Arabo-Muslim conquest of 698, the Jews lived peacefully in North Africa with the other inhabitants of the region, except for a few brief periods of Roman and Byzantine rules. Under Islam, life was at times so good that some of the most important religious works since Babylon were written by North African Jewish scholars. Often, however, the Jews suffered because of the dhimmi status that the Muslims imposed upon them and through which they were discriminated against and even persecuted. Consequently, they welcomed the French colonization of their country from 1830 to 1962. Their enthusiastic adoption of everything French - among which the rejection of religion - came with a high price: the almost total loss of their Jewish identity, which caused them to feel so alienated in their native land that when the French left, so did they, mostly for Israel but also for other countries.
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 1640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress. Cataloging Policy and Support Office and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Political and Economic History of the Jews of Afghanistan written by Sara Koplik and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Political and Economic History of the Jews of Afghanistan by Sara Koplik describes the situation of Jews in that country during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly 1839-1952. It examines the political, economic and social conditions they faced as religious minorities. The work focuses upon harsh governmental economic policies of the 1930s and 1940s spearheaded by 'Abd al-Majid Khan Zabuli which caused the impoverishment and suffering of both the local community and refugees from Soviet Central Asia. The question of Nazi influence in Afghanistan is addressed, with the author arguing that it was mainly limited to the economic sphere. An examination of the appeal of Zionism and the community's immigration to Israel is included.
Download or read book Synagogues in the Islamic World written by Gharipour Mohammad Gharipour and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautifully illustrated volume looks at the spaces created by and for Jews in areas under the political or religious control of Muslims. Covering regions as diverse as Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, it asks how the architecture of synagogues responded to contextual issues and traditions, and how these contexts influenced the design and evolution of synagogues. As well as revealing how synagogues reflect the culture of the Jewish minority at macro and micro scales, from the city to the interior, the book also considers patterns of the development of synagogues in urban contexts and in connection with urban elements and monuments.
Download or read book Memories of Eden written by Violette Shamash and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to legend, the Garden of Eden was located in Iraq, and for millennia, Jews resided peacefully in metropolitan Baghdad. Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad reconstructs the last years of the oldest Jewish Diaspora community in the world through the recollections of Violette Shamash, a Jewish woman who was born in Baghdad in 1912, sent to her daughter Mira Rocca and son-in-law, the British journalist Tony Rocca. The result is a deeply textured memoir—an intimate portrait of an individual life, yet revealing of the complex dynamics of the Middle East in the twentieth century. Toward the end of her long life, Violette Shamash began writing letters, notes, and essays and sending them to the Roccas. The resulting book begins near the end of Ottoman rule and runs through the British Mandate, the emergence of an independent Iraq, and the start of dictatorial government. Shamash clearly loved the world in which she grew up but is altogether honest in her depiction of the transformation of attitudes toward Baghdad’s Jewish population. Shamash’s world is finally shattered by the Farhud, the name given to the massacre of hundreds of Iraqi Jews over three days in 1941. An event that has received very slight historical coverage, the Farhud is further described and placed in context in a concluding essay by Tony Rocca.
Download or read book Arabs of the Jewish Faith written by Joshua Schreier and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring how Algerian Jews responded to and appropriated France's newly conceived "civilizing mission" in the mid-nineteenth century, Arabs of the Jewish Faith shows that the ideology, while rooted in French Revolutionary ideals of regeneration, enlightenment, and emancipation, actually developed as a strategic response to the challenges of controlling the unruly and highly diverse populations of Algeria's coastal cities.
Download or read book The D nme written by Marc David Baer and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-16 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of the Dönme, the descendents of Jews who resided in the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century. For two centuries following their conversion, the Dönme were accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century rose to the top of Salonikan society. The Dönme helped transform Salonika into a cosmopolitan city, promoting the newest innovation in trade and finance, urban reform, and modern education. They eventually became the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Ottoman sultan and the establishment of a secular republic. To their proponents, the Dönme are enlightened secularists and Turkish nationalists who fought against the dark forces of superstition and religious obscurantism. To their opponents, they were simply crypto-Jews engaged in a plot to dissolve the Islamic empire. Both points of view assume the Dönme were anti-religious, whether couched as critique or praise. But it is time that we take these religious people seriously on their own terms. In the Ottoman Empire, the Dönme promoted morality, ethics, spirituality, and a syncretistic religion that reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from their origins to their near total dissolution as they became secular Turks in the mid-twentieth century.
Download or read book Jewish Spain written by Tabea Alexa Linhard and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-04 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is meant by "Jewish Spain"? The term itself encompasses a series of historical contradictions. No single part of Spain has ever been entirely Jewish. Yet discourses about Jews informed debates on Spanish identity formation long after their 1492 expulsion. The Mediterranean world witnessed a renewed interest in Spanish-speaking Jews in the twentieth century, and it has grappled with shifting attitudes on what it meant to be Jewish and Spanish throughout the century. At the heart of this book are explorations of the contradictions that appear in different forms of cultural memory: literary texts, memoirs, oral histories, biographies, films, and heritage tourism packages. Tabea Alexa Linhard identifies depictions of the difficulties Jews faced in Spain and Northern Morocco in years past as integral to the survival strategies of Spanish Jews, who used them to make sense of the confusing and harrowing circumstances of the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist repression, and World War Two. Jewish Spain takes its place among other works on Muslims, Christians, and Jews by providing a comprehensive analysis of Jewish culture and presence in twentieth-century Spain, reminding us that it is impossible to understand and articulate what Spain was, is, and will be without taking into account both "Muslim Spain" and "Jewish Spain."
Download or read book Once Jews written by Josette C. Goldish and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nineteenth century was a time of great political and economic upheaval in the Caribbean. The Sephardic Jews of Curacao were active participants in this changing environment. They were retailers, traders, politicians, poets, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, each contributing in their own way. This book tells their stories.
Download or read book Modern Ladino Culture written by Olga Borovaya and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-05 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olga Borovaya explores the emergence and expansion of print culture in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), the mother tongue of the Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman Empire, in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. She provides the first comprehensive study of the three major forms of Ladino literary production—the press, belles lettres, and theater—as a single cultural phenomenon. The product of meticulous research and innovative methodology, Modern Ladino Culture offers a new perspective on the history of the Ladino press, a novel approach to the study of belles lettres in Ladino and their relationship to their European sources, and a fine-grained critique of Sephardic plays as venues for moral education and politicization.
Download or read book A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica written by Aron Rodrigue and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-11 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents for the first time the complete text of the earliest known Ladino-language memoir, transliterated from the original script, translated into English, and introduced and explicated by the editors. The memoirist, Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi (1820–1903), wrote about Ottoman Jews' daily life at a time when the finely wrought fabric of Ottoman society was just beginning to unravel. His vivid portrayal of life in Salonica, a major port in the Ottoman Levant with a majority Jewish population, thus provides a unique window into a way of life before it disappeared as a result of profound political and social changes and the World Wars. Sa'adi was a prominent journalist and publisher, one of the most significant creators of modern Sephardic print culture. He was also a rebel who accused the Jewish leadership of Salonica of being corrupt, abusive, and fanatical; that leadership, in turn, excommunicated him from the Jewish community. The experience of excommunication pervades Sa'adi's memoir, which documents a world that its author was himself actively involved in changing.
