Columbia University Press, 2003, 549p.
HUC Library
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The Jews in the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times is a collection of 26 chapters, it is intended for an undergraduate audience. The chapters are uneven in quality and there is a good deal of duplication of information. It is divided into two parts: Themes and Country-by-County Survey. Some topics and countries represented provide valuable information. The information is general and survey oriented and needs to be supplemented to give students a concrete understanding of the material.
Part 1 Themes: 13 chapters covering history, economic life, communal and religious leadership, intellectual life, language, education, Zionism, beliefs and customs, material culture, music and the world of women. Useful and informative chapters are:
Ch. 1, Jane Gerber, "History of the Jews in Middle East and North Africa from the Rise of Islam Until 1700", pp. 3-18; a succinct and useful history that focuses on Islamic and Christian religious and political rule and the expulsion. Identifies important historical events, individuals and communities leading to rise of Jewry in Ottoman Empire.
Ch. 5, Zvi Zohar, "Religion: Rabbinic Tradition and the Response to Modernity," 65-84; useful chapter that surveys response literature addressing various issues that reflect Sephardi/Mizrachi concerns, texts are given and translated in English.
Ch. 10, Issachar Ben-Ami, "Beliefs and Customs," 180-204; covers life cycle events and surveys customs for bar mitzvah, the detailed activities of a wedding, mourning customs, and pilgrimage and Zaddik veneration including hillula.
Ch. 11, Esther Juhasz, "Material Culture," 205-223; interesting presentation of dress and ritual objects with 36 photographs in black and white. This chapter effectively ties together concepts that demonstrate the continuity of Spanish Jewish culture and the influences of local culture, this is demonstrated in dress and rugs and other ritual objects nicely portrayed in the photographs, very accessible.
Ch. 12, Mark Kligman, "Music," 224-234; overview of music of Mediterranean Jewry describing religious, para-liturgical music (piyyut and Judeo-Spanish repertoire), and musika mizrachit in Israel. A CD with 27 tracks is included in the book and texts of the examples are included in the Appendix.
Part 2 Country-by-Country Survey includes a 15-20 page chapter on each of the following countries/regions: Ottoman Turkey, The Ottoman Balkans, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, Eretz Israel/Palestine 1800-1948, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt and the Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Each chapter is encyclopedic providing history, historical events, main features, migration, population statistics, and further reading material. It is a good introduction to each country/region but dry in presentation. If this book is used in the classroom it would require a good deal of supplemental material.
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