At first glance, the articles contained in Cultures of the Jews would be difficult to use in HUC courses because they tend to be quite long, between forty and eighty pages long. Upon closer inspection, however, each one is sub-divided into short manageable units. For example, Raymond Scheindlin’s piece, “Merchants and Intellectuals, Rabbis and Poets: Judeo-Arabic Culture in the Golden Age of Islam,” is seventy-five pages long, but is divided into sections on ‘history,’ ‘language,’ ‘scholarship,’ ‘varieties of religious experience,’ and ‘Hebrew Poetry and Belles Lettres,’ each of which could be assigned for particular topics in a class or for a variety of classes. Like Zion Zohar’s Sephardi & Mizrahi Jewry, the articles in Biale’s book are jargon-free, intended for undergraduate or intro-level graduate courses, and aimed at the non-specialist.

Scheindlin traces the process by which Jews adopted Arabic language and culture and made it their own, transforming it into “Judeo-Arabic” much like Jews in Central and Eastern Europe would later transform medieval German into “Judeo-German,” better known as Yiddish. He also demonstrates the extent to which Jewish culture, both elite and popular, was bound to the Jews’ surroundings. Benjamin Gampel, in his “A Letter to a Wayward Teacher: The Transformations of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia,” focuses on the impact of the persecutions and mass conversions of 1391, and explores what attracted some Jews to Christianity and, on the hand, what held most of them to Judaism. Gampel demonstrates that since many Jews who converted held on to some form of Judaism, medieval Christian Spain witnessed an entirely new form of Jewish identity, blurring the boundaries between the two rival religions and challenging fixed notions of “Christian” and “Jew.” Moreover, the doctrine of “limpieza de sangre” injected the new element of racial purity into the Iberian context, creating the possibility of a hybrid identity in which a converted Jew might not count as a full Christian. In his “Bom Judesmo: The Western Sephardic Diaspora,” Yosef Kaplan traces the development of Sephardic colonies in Western Europe following the expulsion from Spain, highlighting their sense of ‘double exile’ – from the Land of Israel and from the Iberian Peninsula, the latter of which would define their identity for centuries. Kaplan also shows how, in passing through Christianity and back to Judaism, many of the returning conversos had a heterodox sense of themselves, a self-consciousness that foreshadowed the Jewish experience of modernity. He also argues that by internalizing the racial notion of ‘purity of blood,’ Sephardic Jews distinguished themselves from Ashkenazim in racial terms. All three of these articles could be used not only in history classes at HUC, but in any course dealing with Jewish – non-Jewish relations, the relationship between Jews and their surrounding culture, and/or Jewish identity and internal communal dynamics. While perhaps less useful in this regard, the second half of Shalom Sabar’s piece, “Childbirth and Magic: Jewish Folklore and Material Culture,” provides fascinating material on the Jewish magical and other folkloric practices which circulated throughout the Mizrahi world, not only in texts but orally as well, among common people. Sabar’s chapter provides an important ‘counterweight’ to the overwhelming emphasis in Jewish scholarship on the textual creations of elites.

In the third volume, Aron Rodgrigue, one of the most distinguished scholars of Sephardic history in the world, devotes his article to the rise and fall of Ladino culture in the Ottoman Empire as the Jews there confronted modernity, particularly as it was imported from France. Lucette Valensi, in “Multicultural Visions: The Cultural Tapestry of the Jews of North Africa,” focuses on Tunisia and Morocco, and more specifically on the encounter and interaction between Jews of Sephardic, Italian, and Berber backgrounds, as well as the confrontation between modern ideas brought there by the French and the traditional culture that had much in common with the Jews’ Muslim neighbors. Yosef Tobi provides a fascinating survey of Jewish cultures in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Bukhara, cultures with which the students at HUC are probably unfamiliar. Tobi reveals the diversity of the Jews in these lands, drawing a contrast between the cosmopolitan urban atmosphere of Baghdad, for example, and the highly traditional mores of the Jews of Yemen. Many of these communities, though not Sephardic in origin, adopted Sephardic liturgy and rituals from the mystical traditions of Safed; in addition to a history class, Tobi’s material could be used to great effect in a liturgy course. Finally, there are sections of two more articles that address the issue of Mizrahi Jews in Israel. Ariel Hirschfeld’s survey of Hebrew culture in Israel from 1890 to 1990 contains sections on Mizrahi literature and music, while Eli Yassif explores the folklore and customs of those Israelis who originate in Muslim lands. Both articles could provide a fresh and challenging window into crucial aspects of Israeli culture that, by and large, are neglected during their first year in Jerusalem.

In sum, large parts of Biale’s edited volume are highly relevant to the Sephardic Studies Project – they provide wonderful opportunities to expand our students horizons as they encounter Jewish civilization during in their studies at HUC. The articles mentioned above are aimed precisely at the level and ability of most of our students, and should be brought to the attention of the faculty.