The Mellah Society

The Mellah Society PDF Author: Shlomo Deshen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226143406
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
The Mellah Society is a compact yet detailed and fascinating account of Jewish life in precolonial Morocco, based on the voluminous but rarely studied writings of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Judeo-Moroccan sages. Shlomo Deshen, author of several books on North African Jewish immigrants to Israel, here turns his attention to the past. Taking as his focus the tension between individualism and communal authority—symbolized by the walls of the mellahs, the Jewish quarters—he applies to traditional Moroccan Jewish society questions of concern to sociologists everywhere regarding political organization, economic activity, religion, and the family. From such documents as private correspondence, archival photographs, and the legal commentaries of rabbis who served in the Jewish community courts, Deshen draws out details of daily life: disputes between spouses, businessmen, craftsmen, and inheritors; the ramifications of marriage contracts; and claims involving community taxes and extortions by Muslim potentates. Linking this material with recent historical and anthropological studies of the Maghreb, Deshen reconstructs a community about which little has been known and places it squarely within the context of traditional Moroccan society. Individual chapters deal with relations between Muslims and Jews, the material conditions of Jewish life, and the nature of politics within the mellah. Deshen devotes particular attention to the nature of the Moroccan rabbinate, the sociology of the mellah synagogue, lay community leadership, and the historic role of the Sephardic heritage in Morocco after the expulsion from medieval Spain. His close study of the nature of the extended family in traditional Morocco corrects popular misconceptions. Originally published in Israel in 1983, now translated and expanded by its author, The Mellah Society draws upon Middle Eastern and Jewish history, textual Judaic studies, and social anthropology to make an original contribution that will interest scholars of the Middle East and North Africa as well as anyone concerned with Jewish history and ethnicity.

The Mellah Society

The Mellah Society PDF Author: Shlomo Deshen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226143406
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Mellah Society is a compact yet detailed and fascinating account of Jewish life in precolonial Morocco, based on the voluminous but rarely studied writings of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Judeo-Moroccan sages. Shlomo Deshen, author of several books on North African Jewish immigrants to Israel, here turns his attention to the past. Taking as his focus the tension between individualism and communal authority—symbolized by the walls of the mellahs, the Jewish quarters—he applies to traditional Moroccan Jewish society questions of concern to sociologists everywhere regarding political organization, economic activity, religion, and the family. From such documents as private correspondence, archival photographs, and the legal commentaries of rabbis who served in the Jewish community courts, Deshen draws out details of daily life: disputes between spouses, businessmen, craftsmen, and inheritors; the ramifications of marriage contracts; and claims involving community taxes and extortions by Muslim potentates. Linking this material with recent historical and anthropological studies of the Maghreb, Deshen reconstructs a community about which little has been known and places it squarely within the context of traditional Moroccan society. Individual chapters deal with relations between Muslims and Jews, the material conditions of Jewish life, and the nature of politics within the mellah. Deshen devotes particular attention to the nature of the Moroccan rabbinate, the sociology of the mellah synagogue, lay community leadership, and the historic role of the Sephardic heritage in Morocco after the expulsion from medieval Spain. His close study of the nature of the extended family in traditional Morocco corrects popular misconceptions. Originally published in Israel in 1983, now translated and expanded by its author, The Mellah Society draws upon Middle Eastern and Jewish history, textual Judaic studies, and social anthropology to make an original contribution that will interest scholars of the Middle East and North Africa as well as anyone concerned with Jewish history and ethnicity.

The Mellah of Marrakesh

The Mellah of Marrakesh PDF Author: Emily Gottreich
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253218632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
" The Mellah of Marrakesh] captures the vibrancy of Jewish society in Marrakesh in the tumultuous last decades prior to colonial rule and in the first decades of life in the colonial era. Although focused on the Jewish community, it offers a compelling portrait of the political, social, and economic issues confronting all of Morocco and sets a new standard for urban social history." --Dale F. Eickelman Weaving together threads from Jewish history and Islamic urban studies, The Mellah of Marrakesh situates the history of what was once the largest Jewish quarter in the Arab world in its proper historical and geographical contexts. Although framed by coverage of both earlier and later periods, the book focuses on the late 19th century, a time when both the vibrancy of the mellah and the tenacity of longstanding patterns of inter-communal relations that took place within its walls were being severely tested. How local Jews and Muslims, as well as resident Europeans lived the big political, economic, and social changes of the pre- and early colonial periods is reconstructed in Emily Gottreich's vivid narrative. Published with the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Jewish Society in Fez 1450-1700

Jewish Society in Fez 1450-1700 PDF Author: Jane S. Gerber
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004058200
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description


Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa

Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa PDF Author: Emily Benichou Gottreich
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253001463
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
With only a small remnant of Jews still living in the Maghrib at the beginning of the 21st century, the vast majority of today's inhabitants of North Africa have never met a Jew. Yet as this volume reveals, Jews were an integral part of the North African landscape from antiquity. Scholars from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Israel, and the United States shed new light on Jewish life and Muslim-Jewish relations in North Africa through the lenses of history, anthropology, language, and literature. The history and life stories told in this book illuminate the close cultural affinities and poignant relationships between Muslims and Jews, and the uneasy coexistence that both united and divided them throughout the history of the Maghrib.

Synagogues in the Islamic World

Synagogues in the Islamic World PDF Author: Gharipour Mohammad Gharipour
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474468438
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This beautifully illustrated volume looks at the spaces created by and for Jews in areas under the political or religious control of Muslims. Covering regions as diverse as Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, it asks how the architecture of synagogues responded to contextual issues and traditions, and how these contexts influenced the design and evolution of synagogues. As well as revealing how synagogues reflect the culture of the Jewish minority at macro and micro scales, from the city to the interior, the book also considers patterns of the development of synagogues in urban contexts and in connection with urban elements and monuments.

Jewish Topographies

Jewish Topographies PDF Author: Julia Brauch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131711101X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
How have Jews experienced their environments and how have they engaged with specific places? How do Jewish spaces emerge, how are they contested, performed and used? With these questions in mind, this anthology focuses on the production of Jewish space and lived Jewish spaces and sheds light on their diversity, inter-connectedness and multi-dimensionality. By exploring historical and contemporary case studies from around the world, the essays collected here shift the temporal focus generally applied to Jewish civilization to a spatially oriented perspective. The reader encounters sites such as the gardens cultivated in the Ghettos during World War II, the Israeli development town of Netivot, Thornhill, an Orthodox suburb of Toronto, or new virtual sites of Jewish (Second) Life on the Internet, and learns about the Jewish landkentenish movement in Interwar Poland, the Jewish connection to the sea and the culinary landscapes of Russian Jews in New York. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, with a strong foothold in cultural history and cultural anthropology, this anthology introduces new methodological and conceptual approaches to the study of the spatial aspects of Jewish civilization.

Sacred Precincts

Sacred Precincts PDF Author: Mohammad Gharipour
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004280227
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
This book examines non-Muslim religious sites, structures and spaces in the Islamic world. It reveals a vibrant portrait of life in the religious sites by illustrating how architecture responds to contextual issues and traditions. Sacred Precincts explores urban context; issues of identity; design; construction; transformation and the history of sacred sites and architecture in Europe, the Middle East and Africa from the advent of Islam to the 20th century. It includes case studies on churches and synagogues in Iran, Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Morocco and Malta, and on sacred sites in Nigeria, Mali, and the Gambia. With contributions by Clara Alvarez, Angela Andersen, Karen Britt, Karla Britton, Jorge Manuel Simão Alves Correia, Elvan Cobb, Daniel Coslett, Mohammad Gharipour, Mattia Guidetti, Suna Güven, Esther Kühn, Amy Landau, Ayla Lepine, Theo Maarten van Lint, David Mallia, Erin Maglaque, Susan Miller, A.A. Muhammad-Oumar, Meltem Özkan Altınöz, Jennifer Pruitt, Rafael Sedighpour, Ann Shafer, Jorge Manuel Simão Alves Correia, Ebru Özeke Tökmeci, Steven Thomson, Heghnar Watenpaugh, Alyson Wharton and Ethel S. Wolper.

Traditional Society in Transition: The Yemeni Jewish Experience

Traditional Society in Transition: The Yemeni Jewish Experience PDF Author: Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004272917
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
In Traditional Society in Transition: The Yemeni Jewish Experience Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman offers an account of the unique circumstances of Yemeni Jewish existence in the wake of major changes since the second half of the nineteenth century. It follows this community's transition from a traditional patriarchal society to a group adjusting to the challenges of a modern society. Unlike the perception of the Yemeni Jews as receptive to modernity only following immigration to Palestine and Israel, Eraqi Klorman convincingly shows that some modern ideas played a role in their lives while in Yemen. Once in Palestine, they appear here as adjusting to the new conditions by striving to participate in the Zionist enterprise, consenting to secular education, transforming family practices and the status of women. “The book is an important contribution to the study of Yemeni Jews in Yemen and abroad as well as for Jewish-Muslim relations, relations between Yemeni Jews and other Jews, and gender studies...Many of these issues have not been previously studied, and the use of private archives and interviews greatly increases the value of this study." -Rachel Simon, Princeton University. Princeton, NJ, Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews, November/December 2014.

Early Modern Jewish Civilization

Early Modern Jewish Civilization PDF Author: David Graizbord
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040004784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
This collection is an introductory historical survey and selective cultural analysis of the development, coalescence, and eventual waning of a diasporic civilization—that of the Jews of the early modern period (ca. 1391–1789) in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and key nodes of the Iberian Empires in the Americas. Each chapter explores key factors that shaped both distinctive early modern Jewish communities and a remarkably coalescent and far broader community-of-communities. The contributors engage and answer the following questions: What do historians mean by “early modernity,” and to what extent does the concept illuminate the history and culture(s) of Jews from the end of the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment? What were the general demographic contours of the Jewish diaspora over this period and how did they change? How did culture, politics, technology, economics, and gender shape diasporic Jewish communities across eastern and western Europe and the New World over the course of some 400 years? Ultimately, the work renders a portrait of coherence and diversity, continuity and discontinuity, in early modern Jewish life within and across temporal and geographic boundaries. Early Modern Jewish Civilization is essential reading for all students of Jewish history and civilization and early modern history more broadly.

The Mellah of Marrakesh

The Mellah of Marrakesh PDF Author: Emily Gottreich
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
The lively history of the Jewish quarter of Marrakesh and its complex ties to Morocco's Muslim population