aOffers refreshing new insights into the Sephardic migration from
Ottoman lands to America in the early twentieth century. Drawing
heavily upon the unknown riches of the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino)
press, Ben-Ur illuminates many unknown aspects of the Jewish
immigrant experience. She sheds new light on American Jewry,
providing a different narrative that will be especially welcome to
students of ethnicity and immigration in general as well as readers
seeking information on the Hispanic-Jewish encounter.a
--Jane S. Gerber, Director of the Institute for Sephardic Studies,
City University of New York
A small band of Sephardim, or Jews who trace their origins to
Spain and Portugal, were the first Jews to arrive in the New World.
By the 1720s, these Western Sephardim were outnumbered by
Ashkenazim (Jews of Germanic and Eastern European background),
though they maintained religious hegemony until the turn of the
nineteenth century.
A far larger group of Sephardic Jews, Iberian in remote origin,
immigrated to the U.S. from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans toward
the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the
twentieth. Most of these Eastern Sephardim settled in New York,
establishing the most important Judeo-Spanish community outside the
former Ottoman Empire. A smaller group of Mizrahi Jews from
Arab-speaking lands arrived at the same time. A minority within a
minority and often differing in their culture and rituals, both
Sephardim and Mizrahim were not readily recognized as Jews by their
Ashkenazic coreligionists. At the same time, they forged alliances
with the Hispanic and Arab non-Jewish immigrant communities with
whom they shared significant cultural and linguisticties.
The denial of their Jewishness was a defining experience for
Sephardi and Mizrahi immigrants and, in some cases, for their
native-born children and grandchildren as well. The failure to
recognize Sephardim as fellow Jews continues today in textbooks,
articles, documentaries, films, and popular awareness. More often
than not, Sephardic Jews are simply absent from any sort of
portrayal of the American Jewish community.
Drawing on primary source documents such as the Ladino
(Judeo-Spanish) press, archival documents, and oral histories,
Sephardic Jews in America offers the first book-length academic
treatment of their history in the United States, from 1654 to the
present, focusing on the age of mass immigration. It will appeal to
all those interested in the history of the Jews in America, U.S.
immigration, ethnicity, Hispanic and Arab American studies, and
sociology.
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