This ground-breaking documentary history contains over 150 primary sources originally written in 15 languages by or about Sephardi Jews. Designed for use in the classroom, these documents offer students an intimate view of how Sephardim experienced the major regional and world events of the modern era. They also provide a vivid exploration of the quotidian lives of Sephardi women, men, boys, and girls in the Judeo-Spanish heartland of the Ottoman Balkans and Middle East, as well as the émigré centers which Sephardim settled throughout the twentieth century, including North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Sarah Stein has been awarded a National Jewish Book Award for her work as the co-author of Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700-1950. Stein was honored in the category of Sephardic culture and was given the Mimi S. Frank Award.

About the Author: Sarah Abevaya Stein is Professor of History and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA.  Her award-winning scholarship includes Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Sephardi Lives:  a documentary history, 1700-1950 (Stanford University Press, 2014), and Plumes:  Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce (Yale University Press, 2008).

About the Commentators: Devin E. Naar is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies, Assistant Professor of History, and Chair of the Sephardic Studies Program at the University of Washington. Dr. Naar is writing a book about the Jews of Salonica based on his award-winning dissertation completed at Stanford University and also collaborated on Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700-1950 as a translator.

David N. Myers received his A.B. from Yale College in 1982, and undertook graduate studies at Tel-Aviv and Harvard Universities before completing his doctorate at Columbia in 1991. He has written extensively in the fields of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history, with a particular interest in the history of Jewish historiography. He has authored Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (Oxford: 1995), Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton, 2003), and Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz (Brandeis University Press, 2008).

 

Maurice Amado Sephardic Studies Series: Book Launch

Sarah Abrevaya Stein

(UCLA)

Commentators

Devin E. Naar

(University of Washington)

David N. Myers

(UCLA)

Moderator

Todd Presner

(UCLA)

Sponsored By:

UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies

Cosponsored By:

UCLA Department of History

UCLA Department of Italian

UCLA Center for European & Eurasian Studies

UCLA Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures

UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese