Important Book Resources for Sephardic Studies
David Shasha
Important Book Resources for Sephardic Studies
Over the past couple of years I have been gathering some important bibliographical items that are critical for the study of the Sephardic heritage. The following article will present the many resources that are currently available to the English-speaking reader interested in learning more about the subject. I will follow this presentation with an extensive reading list I prepared in response to a friend who raised the issue of Sephardic education and the problems that we as a community face in making our civilization known to the world.
Golden Age Sephardic Poetry
The most important Sephardic literary-cultural resource published in the past decade has been Peter Cole’s monumental annotated English-language anthology of Sephardic Jewish poetry The Dream of the Poem:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8349.html
For all of its many virtues, the printed book is missing one thing: the poems in their original Hebrew versions.
I am happy to be able to say that the primary anthology of the Hebrew texts of this seminal poetry of the classical Sephardic tradition – Hayyim Schirmann’s four-volume anthology Ha-Shirah ha-Ibrit bi-Sfarad u-bi-Provens first published in 1956 – is now back in print and available at an extremely reasonable price from the publisher Mossad Bialik:
http://www.bialik-publishing.co.il/product_info.php?products_id=1224&language=en
For those who can read Hebrew, the Schirmann anthology is an essential purchase. It is the most comprehensive collection of medieval Sephardic poetry ever assembled and contains the masterful annotations of the greatest scholar of this literature.
The Cole and Schirmann anthologies can be augmented for the student by two important popular works that present the culture and history of Andalusian Jewry:
Two Popular Books on Andalus-Sepharad
Maria Rosa Menocal’s Ornament of the World has become the standard reference for many readers wishing to have a general understanding of Andalus-Sepharad:
Joel Kraemer’s definitive biography of the great rabbinic sage Moses Maimonides provides a comprehensive review of this central figure in Sephardic history. It is not just the story of one individual, but gives us a panoramic view of the entire religious history of Judaism in the Middle Ages.
The Society of Heshaim
I have just discovered the continuing work of an important Sephardic institution called the Society of Heshaim (Etz Hayyim) which publishes Anglo-Sephardic works. The society continues the traditions of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in London’s Bevis Marks and offers prayer-books and community histories:
Of special note is the Society’s 2008 republication of Hakham David Nieto’s 1714 classic Matteh Dan, The Rod of Judgment. Nieto’s work was perhaps the most brilliant defense of the Oral Law and the rabbinic tradition written in the post-Expulsion era.
It is to be remembered that the converted Iberian exiles had little or no contact with the Talmudic tradition. Their only real contact with Judaism in Catholic Spain was the Old Testament. So it was necessary for rabbis in the early Modern period to focus on presenting the Oral tradition to the many Conversos seeking to return to Jewish observance as they moved out of the Iberian Peninsula to places like Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, Bordeaux, and other European cities where they were safe to practice their Jewish faith.
The deluxe reprint of Matteh Dan contains the Hebrew and Spanish originals and Louis Loewe’s English translation:
http://www.heshaim.org/other-items-2/
We should note that there has been a recent English translation of the book by an Ashkenazi Orthodox scholar that does not effectively grasp the intellectual grandeur and religious genius of the work, so it is good to have the older translation available again:
Digital Reprints of Sephardic Religious Humanist Classics
Thanks to the excellent work being done to digitize old books, we have been blessed to see many Sephardic classics restored to print.
One of the most important works of Modern Sephardic religious thought is Moses Angel’s The Law of Sinai and its Appointed Times. Published in 1858 in London, this work which is structured by the weekly Torah lections is a classic of Religious Humanism.
I have recently done a couple of SHU posts on another Anglo-Sephardic luminary Grace Aguilar (1816-1847), one of the most important – and prolific – Jewish writers of the 19th century. Her writings on Judaism remain inspirational and reflect the Sephardic tradition of Religious Humanism with her own uniquely proto-feminist leanings:
The Spirit of Judaism (1842)
The Jewish Faith (1845)
Women of Israel (1846)
Grace Aguilar’s Sephardic Fiction
In her tragically-shortened life (she died from a lifelong ailment at the age of 31) Aguilar was a prolific writer of fiction. Most of her literary works were not on specifically Jewish themes, but two of her stories dealt with the matter of Crypto-Jewish identity in a particularly moving way.
Her posthumously-published novel The Vale of Cedars; or, the Martyr is a brilliant revision of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe where a young Converso woman gets caught up in a forbidden romance that might expose her to the depredations of the Inquisition as had happened so many times to the persecuted community that so very carefully hid its Jewish identity:
The Vale of Cedars is one of the few works of imaginative fiction that addresses the profound intricacies of Converso life in a way that makes history come alive for the reader. We grasp the innermost feelings of that community, its fears, and its profound faith in the everlasting truth of Judaism.
Aguilar’s other important piece of Jewish fiction is the 1843 novella The Perez Family; a domestic tale of a Sephardic Jewish family in England and its vicissitudes. It is filled with Aguilar’s characteristic concern for religion and the challenges of Jews adapting to the British way of life.
An excellent anthology of Aguilar’s writings that includes the full text of The Perez Family has been published under the editorship of Michael Galchinsky:
Though her life was tragically cut short, Grace Aguilar left us with an enormous body of writing that articulated a uniquely Sephardic Jewish voice that sought engagement with the Victorian world that she lived in. Hers was a perspective firmly committed to the tenets of Torah and to the illustrious heritage of the Iberian Jewish tradition which she so loved and which was so much a part of her being.
Two Sephardic Giants of the Modern Age: Elijah Benamozegh, Sabato Morais, and Vichian Religious Humanism
Born in Italy, these two Sephardic rabbis embody the illustrious traditions of Rabbinic Humanism. As we have learned from the many studies of my esteemed teacher Rabbi Jose Faur, the importance of the Neopolitan thinker Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) on Sephardic Judaism led to a reinvigoration of the old Maimonidean model in the Enlightenment era:
http://www.josefaurstudies.org/_Vico_Religious_Humanism_and_the_Sephardic_Tradition_by_Jose_Faur.pdf
Vico’s classic work New Science was known to Sephardic Jews when it was first published. A copy of the book was sent in November 1731 to Joseph Attias who, as noted by Faur, shared it with his friends. Vico’s thinking was particularly congenial to Sephardim because, unlike the emerging system of German Idealist philosophy rooted in the thought of Descartes (1596-1650), Spinoza (1632-1677), and especially Voltaire (1694-1778), Vico’s concept of human knowledge was grounded in a positive religious conceptuality.
In contrast to the rigid mathematical scientism prevalent in Enlightenment thought, Vico sought a more dialectical approach based on what he called a “Poetic” reading of history. His book is structured along the lines of this poetic reading that is infused with a hermeneutical dialectics, broken down into categories such as logic, metaphysics, economics, politics, and the various other disciplines of study prevalent in European thought.
We should take note that two of the most important intellectual figures of 20th century Europe, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the classicist Arnaldo Momigliano (both Jewish, the latter of Sephardic origin), wrote important studies of Vico: Berlin’s 1960 book Vico and Herder and Momigliano’s much-quoted 1966 essay “Vico’s Scienza Nuova: Roman ‘Bestioni’ and Roman ‘Eroi’” first published in the journal History and Theory and reprinted in his classic collection Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography. Both Berlin and Momigliano saw the important role of Vico’s thought as a counter to the authoritarian and anti-democratic values in European civilization during that bloody century.
In Vico Jews could find a secularism that did not, as would be the case with Enlightenment thought, eliminate the Bible and religious values. It was a Religious rather than purely Secular form of Humanistic thinking.
Both Elijah Benamozegh (1822-1900) and Sabato Morais (1823-1897) continued the tradition of Rabbinic Humanism passed on in a Sephardic tradition that was informed by a thorough reading in the classical Humanist tradition fused with an abiding commitment to the Talmudic tradition. Another great 19th century Sephardic figure, the itinerant Rabbi Israel Moses Hazzan (1807-1863), born in Izmir and lived in Alexandria, Corfu, and Rome before being called to his Maker in Beirut, also made extensive use of Vico’s Religious Humanism in his work.
Unlike Ashkenazi Judaism which became bogged down in internecine battles between Orthodox and Reform factions in the wake of the Haskalah, Sephardic sages like Benamozegh and Morais provided their communities and students with a stable and creative Jewish model that refused factionalism and divisiveness. Dealing with the harsh constrictions of Secular Humanism, Ashkenazim broke off into combative factions divided by their attitude towards secular knowledge.
Benamozegh’s central work on Jewish thought and Modernity is Israel and Humanity:
Although it is not often cited in academic studies on Modern Jewish Thought, the book is a masterpiece that gives us a profound synthesis of contemporary philosophy and traditional Judaism. Following in the footsteps of the great Maimonides, Benamozegh adapts Enlightenment thought as the previous Jewish philosophers incorporated Greco-Arabic philosophy into their treatises.
Sabato Morais moved from his native Italy to England and ended up in Philadelphia where he transmitted this noble heritage to the congregants of Mikveh Israel, a number of whom became leaders of the American Jewish community. Morais, along with Henry Pereira Mendes (1852-1937) of Manhattan’s Shearith Israel, founded the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York which maintained a Sephardic pedagogical orientation until Morais’ death in 1897.
Thanks to the excellent studies of Arthur Kiron we now have an intimate knowledge of Morais’ work and his intellectual-cultural values. Kiron’s dissertation Golden Ages, Promised Lands is listed in the reading list below. My article on Morais and Sephardic Religious Humanism provides further clarification of the matter:
Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy
Back in 1992 the Jewish world marked the quincentennial of the Spanish Expulsion by focusing attention on the illustrious history of the Sephardim. Many books and public events were presented that sought to educate people on our culture, history, and religious heritage.
Perhaps the best and certainly the most comprehensive work to be published that year was the massive two-volume tome from the Magnes Press of Hebrew University edited by the scholar Haim Beinart called simply The Sephardi Legacy:
http://www.magnespress.co.il/website_en/index.asp?category=217&id=450
http://www.magnespress.co.il/website_en/index.asp?category=231&id=451
The book’s 38 chapters cover an extraordinary swath of history and culture with a special emphasis on the era of the Inquisition and Christian Spain. In addition, the studies analyze the place of Sephardic culture in the European Diaspora and its influence on Modern civilization. The expert scholars delve deeply into the literary, scientific, philosophical, artistic, and religious elements in the Sephardic tradition in a way shows us its great richness and diversity.
The vast and winding arc of Sephardic history is on full display in The Sephardi Legacy and explained in rich detail by the scholars who know it best.
Essential Books on Sephardic History and Culture
I have prepared many reading lists over the years, the following one has been designed to focus more specifically on the Western Sephardic tradition rather than on the Arab Sephardic tradition.
Unlike most of my reading lists, this one contains a number of books that are out-of-print. My aim in putting the list together was to provide a sense of what has been published in English in terms of its importance to an understanding of Western Sephardic history.
The list aims to cover the most important aspects of the Sephardic tradition, including general history, literature, Conversos and the Inquisition, the Sephardic Diaspora in Europe and the Americas, and the Ottoman world. A number of the books focus on specific historical figures whose biographies open a window on the larger experience of the Sephardic communities they lived in. In these stories we can better grasp the central role that Sephardim played in Western civilization.
Even though some of the 30 books might be hard to purchase and somewhat expensive, the list aims to cover most of the important aspects of Sephardic culture as English-language scholarship has made it available to us.
1. E.H. Lindo, The Jews of Spain and Portugal (London, 1848, digital reprint)
2. Jesus Pelaez del Rosal, editor, The Jews in Cordoba (X-XII Centuries), (Ediciones El Almendro, 1985)
3. Mair Jose Benardete, Hispanic Culture and Character of the Sephardic Jews (Hispanic Institute in the United States, 1953, reprint, Sepher-Hermon Press, 1982)
4. Jerilynn Dodds, Maria Rosa Menocal, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (Yale University Press, 2008)
5. Abraham Newman, The Jews in Spain: Their Social, Political, and Cultural Life During the Middle Ages (Jewish Publication Society, 1942, Two Volumes)
6. Carlos Fuentes, The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World (Houghton Mifflin, 1992, reprint, Mariner Books, 1997)
7. Samuel Usque, Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel [1553], translated by Martin Cohen (Jewish Publication Society, 1964)
8. T.A. Perry, editor and translator, The Moral Proverbs of Santob de Carrion [1345]: Jewish Wisdom in Christian Spain (Princeton University Press, 1987)
9. Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (Jewish Publication Society, 1932, reprint, Sepher-Hermon Press, 1992)
10. Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel: Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat (Jewish Publication Society, 1934)
11. Cecil Roth, Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi (Jewish Publication Society, 1948)
12. Cecil Roth, The Duke of Naxos of the House of Nasi (Jewish Publication Society, 1948)
13. Alfonso Toro, The Carvajal Family: The Jews and the Inquisition in New Spain in the Sixteenth Century, translated and adapted by Frances Hernandez (Texas Western Press, 2002)
http://twp.utep.edu/carvajal.php
14. Jose Faur, In the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity (State University of New York Press, 1992)
15. Stephen Gilman, The Spain of Fernando de Rojas: The Intellectual Landscape of La Celestina (Princeton University Press, 1972)
16. Manuel da Costa Fontes, The Art of Subversion in Inquisitorial Spain: Rojas and Delicado (Purdue University Press, 2005)
17. Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Indiana University Press, 1997)
18. Sanford Shepard, Lost Lexicon: Secret Meanings in the Vocabulary of Spanish Literature During the Inquisition (Ediciones Universal, 1982)
19. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso, A Study in Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (Columbia University Press, 1971, reprint, University of Washington Press, 1981)
20. Marc Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of “New Jews” (Hebrew Union College Press, 2005)
21. Marc Saperstein, Leadership and Conflict: Tensions in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Culture (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization/Oxford University Press, 2014)
22. Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization/Oxford University Press, 1989)
23. Arthur Kiron, Golden Ages, Promised Lands: The Victorian Rabbinic Humanism of Sabato Morais (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 1999)
24. Abigail Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Harvard University Press, 2010)
25. Dianne Ashton, Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America (Wayne State University Press, 1997)
26. David de Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone: Early American Jewish Settlers 1682-1831 (Columbia University Press, 1952)
27. David and Tamar de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in a New World: Portrait of Shearith Israel 1654-1954 (Columbia University Press, 1955)
28. Leon Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica: City at the Crossroads (Current Books, 1946, reprint, Paul Dry Books, 2003)
29. Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews 1430-1950 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)
30. Stephen Schwartz, Sarajevo Rose: A Balkan Jewish Notebook (Al Saqi Books, 2005)
31. Victor Perera, The Cross and the Pear Tree: A Sephardic Journey (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995)
David Shasha
From SHU 568, February 13, 2013