A groundbreaking literary anthology reveals the nature and history of a lesser-known but vital branch of Jewish culture.

In the years following the founding of the State of Israel, close to a million Jews became refugees fleeing their ancestral homelands in the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran. State-sanctioned discrimination, violence, and political unrest brought an abrupt end to these once vibrant communities, scattering their members to the four corners of the earth. Their stories are mostly untold. Sephardi Voices: The Forgotten Exodus of the Arab Jews is a window into the experiences of these communities and their stories of survival. Through gripping first-hand accounts and stunning portrait and documentary photography, we hear on-the-ground stories of pogroms in Libya and Egypt, the burning of synagogues in Syria, the terrible Farhud in Iraq, families escaping via the great airlifts of the Magic Carpet and Operations Ezra and Nehemiah, husbands smuggled in carpets into Iran in search of wives. The authors also provide crucial historical background for these events, as well as updates on the lives of some of these Sephardi Jews who have gone on to rebuild fortunes in London and New York, write novels, and win Nobel Prizes. Sephardi Voices is at once a wide-ranging and intimate story of a large-scale catastrophe and a portrait of the vulnerability of the passage of time.

"Chosen Voices is the definitive survey of an often overlooked aspect of American Jewish history and ethnomusicology, and an insider's look at a profession that is also a vocation.Week after week, year after year, Jews turn to sacred singers for spiritual and emotional support. The job of the hazzan--much more than the traditional ""messenger to God""--is deeply embedded in cultural, social, and religious symbolism, negotiated between the congregation and its chosen voices. Drawing on archival sources, interviews with cantors, and photographs, Slobin traces the development of the American cantorate from the nebulous beginnings of the hazzan as a recognizable figure through the heyday of the superstar sacred singer in the early twentieth century to a diverse portrait of today's cantorate, which now includes women as well as men. Slobin's focus on the current nature of the profession includes careful consideration of the sacred singer's part in creating and maintaining the worship service, the recent relationship between the rabbi and the hazzan within the synagogue, and the music that contemporary cantors sing. This first paperback edition features a new preface by the author. A thirty-five-minute cassette for use with Chosen Voices is available separately from the University of Illinois Press."

The Jewish community in America is the largest and most influential outside Israel. In this book, Dan Cohn-Sherbok interviews members of the Jewish community in Denver and records their words. He also speaks to non-Jews who come into daily contact with the Jews. Over 100 varied voices are sampled.

A rich and provocative overview of Jewish American poetry.

Publisher Description

The year 1492 has long divided the study of Sephardic culture into two distinct periods, before and after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. David A. Wacks examines the works of Sephardic writers from the 13th to the 16th centuries and shows that this literature was shaped by two interwoven experiences of diaspora: first from the Biblical homeland Zion and later from the ancestral hostland, Sefarad. Jewish in Spain and Spanish abroad, these writers negotiated Jewish, Spanish, and diasporic idioms to produce a uniquely Sephardic perspective. Wacks brings Diaspora Studies into dialogue with medieval and early modern Sephardic literature for the first time.