Product Description

Egypt's indigenous Jewish population comprised Arabic-speaking Rabbanite and Karaite Jews, some of whom had been in the country since the early Islamic era. The Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 took refuge in Egypt, and Sephardic immigrants augmented their numbers in the midnineteenth century. Originally welcomed elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, these Spanish Jews came to Egypt seeking economic opportunity in the era of Suez Canal construction and the cotton boom. The late nineteenth century brought Ashkenazi Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe. The different groups formed a heterogeneous community of cosmopolitan hybrids, which were both an element of strength and a factor in its eventual demise.

The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry examines the history of the Egyptian Jewish community after 1948. It focuses on three major areas: the life of the majority of the community, which remained in Egypt from the1948 Arab-Israeli War until the aftermath of the 1956 Suez/Sinai War; the dispersion and reestablishment of Egyptian Jewish communities in the United States, France, and Israel; and contested memories of Jewish life in Egypt since President Anwar al-Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977. Fusing history, ethnography, literary analysis, and autobiography, Joel Beinin conducts an interdisciplinary investigation into identity, dispersion, and the retrieval of identity that is relevant for anyone interested in Egypt, the Jewish Diaspora, or the formation of cultures and identities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #823826 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 342 pages

Review
"Here for the first time is a work of scholarship which illuminates the life of Egypt's Jews, their struggle to be--or remai--Egyptian after hundreds, sometiems thousands of years in the region, and their trials in the diaspora as they redefine a complex identity. . . . Not only does "The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewrydispel many of the Orientalist myths about life in Egypt, with a particular focus on the post-war period, it builds, as its subtitle suggests, a model for valorization of the Levantine identity which Egyptian Jews typify."--"NASAWI News

From the Inside Flap
"The best sort of historical revisionism--sophisticated but unobtrusive in its use of theory, consistently contextual in its assessment of sources and texts, open-ended and suggestive of broader implications in its conclusions."--James Jankowski, coauthor of Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945

From the Back Cover
"The best sort of historical revisionism (sophisticated but unobtrusive in its use of theory, consistently contextual in its assessment of sources and texts, open-ended and suggestive of broader implications in its conclusions." (James Jankowski, coauthor of Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945)