Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa

With only a small remnant of Jews still living in the Maghrib at the beginning of the 21st century, the vast majority of today's inhabitants of North Africa have never met a Jew. Yet as this volume reveals, Jews were an integral part of the North African landscape from antiquity. Scholars from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Israel, and the United States shed new light on Jewish life and Muslim-Jewish relations in North Africa through the lenses of history, anthropology, language, and literature. The history and life stories told in this book illuminate the close cultural affinities and poignant relationships between Muslims and Jews, and the uneasy coexistence that both united and divided them throughout the history of the Maghrib.

Author: Emily Benichou Gottreich
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 07/01/2011
Pages: 386
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780253222251

About the Author

Emily Benichou Gottreich is Vice Chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California Berkeley. She is author of The Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco's Red City (IUP, 2006).

Daniel J. Schroeter is the Amos S. Denard Memorial Chair in Jewish History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is author of The Sultan's Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World and Merchants of Essaouira.