Sephardic Identity: Essays on a Vanishing Jewish Culture

by George K. Zucker

Overview

The Sephardim, a fast-disappearing group of Jews whose ancestors were exiled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, have fought to retain their identity while necessarily assimilating to the surrounding society. This culture was changed by settlement and residence in non-Spanish areas for over four centuries, a Diaspora in the late nineteenth century, and the Nazi Holocaust. Sephardic settlements in Latin America, the United States, Israel, and elsewhere were the result. Because Judaism is as much a culture as a religion, any move toward assimilation into a non-Jewish culture has historically been seen as a threat to Jewish identity: this is an ongoing crisis in Sephardic life.

These essays, representing some of the most innovative work being done in Sephardic studies, are divided into sections exploring history, sociology, anthropology, language, literature and the performing arts. Topics include the possibility that the Sephardim are Judaized Arabs, Berbers and Iberians; the role of Spanish exiles in the Ottoman Empire; Sephardic remnants in Greece; Sephardic philosophy; the literature of New Christians (the community that arose out of forcibly converted Jews) whose works reveal Jewish roots; the Judeo-Spanish press in Salonika; and the influences of Sephardism on contemporary Argentine literature. An introduction to Sephardism begins the work and a conclusion discusses the Sephardic Education Center, which hopes to assure the culture's future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786420216
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	03/09/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

The late George K. Zucker was Professor Emeritus of Spanish at the University of Northern Iowa. He retired in 2001 and lived in Florida.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface     

I. INTRODUCTION: SEPHARDISM AND SEPHARDIC STUDIES
1. Sephardic Scholarship: A Personal Journey     

II. HISTORY, SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY
2. Are the Sephardim Jews or Judaized Arabs, Berbers, and Iberians?     
3. Iberian Exiles in the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire     
4. A Surreptitious Tolerance: Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Southern Balearic Islands     
5. Assimilation and Identity in Spain, Portugal, and Their Colonies     
6. Sephardic Remnants in Ioannina     
7. The Power of Speech among the Sephardim     

III. LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY
8. What Language Did the Jews Speak in Pre-Expulsion Spain?     
9. Don Isaac Abravanel on Exile and Redemption     
10. Judaic Motifs and Religious Inclinations in Romance al divín mártir, Judá Creyente by Antonio Enríquez Gómez (1600–1663)     
11. Sebastián de Horozco (1510-1580), the Ambivalent Anti-Semitic Converso     
12. The Judeo-Spanish Press in Salonika: From Glory to Destruction     
13. The Allure of Sepharad     

IV. MUSIC AND DANCE
14. Is Sephardic Dance Too Sexy?     
15. Sephardic Vocal Music and the Tape Recorder: New Life or the End of an Oral Tradition?     
16. The Mediaization of Judeo-Spanish Song     

V. EPILOGUE: THE FUTURE OF SEPHARDISM
17. The Sephardic Educational Center: Crisis of Identity and Assimilation in Modern American Judaism     

About the Contributors     
Index     

Editorial Reviews

this readable book provides the American reader with a smorgasbord collection of topics”—La Lettre Sepharade.

From the Publisher

this readable book provides the American reader with a smorgasbord collection of topics

La Lettre Sepharade