Important New Book: Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers

[David Shasha]

Friends,           

 

            A few years ago I published a special newsletter on the subject of Sephardim and Zionism.  I take the liberty of resending the special newsletter to provide some background for the publication of a very important new book by Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine. 

 

Many English-language books have been published that treat the history of Palestinian and Zionist nationalism, but very few that study the multi-religious society of Ottoman Palestine prior to 1948.

 

            Tom Segev’s excellent book One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate has some material on the subject, but lacks any serious discussion of the Sephardic Jewish place in the story.  Neville Mandel’s classic work The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I remains the only monograph specifically devoted to the subject but it remains out of print.  Elie Eliachar’s Living with Jews was published in England in 1983 and it too is out of print.

 

            The publication of Otttoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine is a major event that will serve to bring the subject of Ottoman society prior to 1948 into clearer focus.  All the details on the book are available at the following site:

 

http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=17157

 

The special edition of the SHU contains the following articles:

 

The Sephardim and Zionism

By: David Shasha

 

Between “Beloved Ottomania” and “The Land of Israel”: The Struggle over Ottomanism and Zionism Among Palestine’s Sephardi Jews, 1908-13

By: Michelle U. Campos

 

The Sephardi Community in Pre-World War I Jerusalem: Debates in the Press

By: Abigail Jacobson

 

 

 

David Shasha