The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: Dina Danon in Conversation with Devin E. Naar

Talk starts at 12:05​. Across Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, Jews were often confronted with the notion that their religious and cultural distinctiveness was somehow incompatible with the modern age. Yet the view from Ottoman Izmir, a Mediterranean port city, invites a different approach: What happens when Jewish difference is totally unremarkable? What happens when there is no “Jewish Question?”

Drawing extensively on a rich body of previously untapped Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) archival material, Danon will offer a new read on Jewish modernity. Through the voices of beggars on the street and mercantile elites, shoe-shiners and newspaper editors, rabbis and housewives, this talk will underscore how it was new attitudes to poverty and social class, not Judaism, that most significantly framed this Sepharadi community’s encounter with the modern age.

Видео The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: Dina Danon in Conversation with Devin E. Naar канала StroumJewishStudies