Sephardic Studies

The Journey Home: Language, Exile and Identity in Clarisse Nicoïdski’s Lus Ojus Las Manus La Boca

by Celine Piser

King João II of Portugal “O Príncipe Perfeito”and the Jews (1481-1495)

by François Soyer

Exile and Redemption: Amy Levy's Association with Yehuda Halevi and the Transmission of the Sephardic Tradition of Hebrew Poetry

by Luke Devine

Literature and Theology (April 15, 2012): 1-19.

Balbuena, 'Athens, Salonika, & Israel in Margalit Matitiahu's Poetry'

by Monique Balbuena

Balbuena, 'Judeo-Spanish Texts in Latin American Genres'

by Monique Balbuena

Margins within Margins: An Interview with Ruth Knafo Setton and Farideh Dayanim Goldin

by Derek Royal

Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative. Purdue University Press, 2012. 203-22.

Antonio Enríquez Gómez

by Jaime Galbarro

Jaime Galbarro García, "Antonio Enríquez Gómez", en Pablo Jauralde Pou, (dir.), Diccionario filológico de literatura española. Siglo XVII, vol. I, pp. 434-450.

Modern History of Jewish Diaspora Communities

by Samuel Ghiles-Meilhac

Cities of the Dead: Architectural Motifs and Burial Practices in Curaçao’s Religious and Ethnic Communities

by Laura Leibman

Co-authored with Kent Coupé . Published in Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies. XXVII, pp. 56-87.

In this study we analyze the cemeteries of Curaçao, a small desert island in the Dutch West Indies near the coast of... more In this study we analyze the cemeteries of Curaçao, a small desert island in the Dutch West Indies near the coast of Venezuela that was once a crucial player in colonial smuggling and the slave trade. Our study compares the island’s Jewish (Spanish-Portuguese), Protestant (primarily Dutch), and Catholic (Afro-Curaçaoan) cemeteries. Following the work of Dickran and Ann Tashijian, Keith Cunningham, Lynn Gosnell, Suzanna Gott and others, we interpret these stones within the religio-cultural context of the people who used them. We argue that whereas ethnic cemeteries in the United States often emphasize the distinctiveness of the communities, Curaçao’s cemeteries emphasize both ethnic distinction and ethnic elision. The permeability of racial and religious boundaries in the cemeteries reflects the island’s complicated racial history and is an important reminder of how race is often constructed differently outside of the United States. This permeability should not be confused with social equality: indeed, as racial categories became more fluid following emancipation, islanders used other categories such as wealth and status displays to reinforce social privilege within (as opposed to between) ethnic groups.

Reading Amadís in Istanbul

by David Wacks

Blog post

Translation and Coded Dialogue in the Spanish Empire

by Damian Bacich

Pacific Coast Philology (2007). 156-168.

Ladino a judeo-španělština. Smrt a znovuzrození diasporního jazyka (Ladino and Judeo-Spanish. Death and Rebirth of a Diaspora Language)

by Petr Jan Vins

Published in: Maskil 9/4 (2010) 10-12 and 9/5 (2010) 6-7; Online at http://www.maskil.cz

A short survey of history of Judeo-Spanish, a jewish diaspora language with long tradition and a difficult... more A short survey of history of Judeo-Spanish, a jewish diaspora language with long tradition and a difficult contemporary situation.

En el ultimo azul by Carme Riera: Memory's future and the history of the Spanish Jews

by Reyes Coll-Tellechea

in Models of Medieval Literature Minority Views in Spanish Medieval literature and Their Modern Reflections. Juan de la Cuesta Press, 307-320, 2002

Remembering Sepharad

by Reyes Coll-Tellechea

in Memory, Oblivion and Jewish Culture in Latin America. The University of Texas Press, 3-15, 2005

Beginner's Ladino

by Alla Markova

Sephardic Sacred Space In Colonial America

by Laura Leibman

Published in Jewish History Volume 25 (1) / 2011, pp. 13-41

The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest extant synagogue building in the United States, has provoked... more The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest extant synagogue building in the United States, has provoked a certain amount of controversy regarding its origins: while the architect is known, scholars have disputed whether the essential attributes of the structure should be traced to eighteenth-century English pattern books, descriptions of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam provided to architect Peter Harrison by congregants, or the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. The origins of the structure are important, as most of the Spanish-Portuguese synagogues in colonial American and the Caribbean bear the same basic and unusual design features as the Touro structure. This essay argues that the resolution to this controversy lies in the structural ideal behind both the pattern books and the synagogues in Amsterdam and London: the Biblical Tabernacle and Temple as described by Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon de Templo in his messianic study, the Retrato del Templo de Selomo (1642). Early modern synagogue architects mimicked both the proportions prescribed by Leon de Templo and key symbolic design features of the Temple. By echoing the divinely-inspired structures, eighteenth-century Sephardic Jews in colonial America hoped to draw their worship closer to God and to help bring about the messianic era.

Early American Mikvaot: Ritual Baths as the Hope of Israel.

by Laura Leibman

Published in Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Rather than seeing Jewish ritual baths (mikvaot) a timeless and “pre-modern” institution that were used to regulate... more Rather than seeing Jewish ritual baths (mikvaot) a timeless and “pre-modern” institution that were used to regulate female bodies in a punitive fashion, I argue that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ritual baths were part of a larger Enlightenment-inflected religious discourse of redemption and medicinal “water cures” that postulated a more positive view of women than was found in non-Jewish communities in the colonies.  For my analysis I draw upon recent excavations of ritual baths in Amsterdam, Recife, Barbados, Curaçao and St. Eustatius as well as still-standing colonial mikvaot in Suriname. I place a structural reading of these baths within the vision of redemption proposed by Amsterdam Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel, and the idealized discourse about purity laws and ritual baths in the popular eighteenth-century Sephardic biblical commentary, Me’am Loez.

From Holy Land to New England Canaan Rabbi Haim Carigal and Sephardic Itinerant Preaching in the Eighteenth Century

by Laura Leibman

Published in Early American Literature

In this article, I use Carigal’s Shavuot sermon delivered in Newport, RI to call attention to two key differences... more In this article, I use Carigal’s Shavuot sermon delivered in Newport, RI to call attention to two key differences between Jewish and Protestant itinerancy during this era. First while itinerant preaching, particularly among Sephardim, was a crucial aspect of eighteenth-century religious practice, both Carigal and his audience were more deeply transnational than most of their white Protestant equivalents. Thus any analysis of Carigal’s sermon needs to reach beyond the colonies to understand fully the religious and cultural context. Second whereas Protestant itinerants often disrupted local hierarchies, Jewish preachers like Carigal cemented far-flung communities to a tribal center and reinforced rabbinic privilege.