Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of Monastir, 1839-1943

It was 1839, a time when European ideas on education, fashion, entertainment, and politics were infiltrating every aspect of life in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Sephardim, descendants of the Spanish Jews exiled in 1492, were about to undergo vast changes in their education, outlook, and family life. In Monastir, a series of fires initiated these changes early and dramatically. A century later, in 1939, the Second World War began and the Monastir Jews faced extinction. Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of Monastir, 1839-1943, is the first book to tell this dramatic story. It also presents, for the first time, rare photographs and illustrations, original translations of Monastir's Sephardic folklore, and a complete listing of the Monastir Jews who were deported to the Treblinka concentration camp.