Sephardic Journeys Through the Twentieth Century

Sarah Stein in conversation with Aron Rodrigue  on her new book Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

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The Levy family established itself in Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece) in the 18th century and for some two hundred years published books and newspapers for the region’s Sephardic Jews. With the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, the Levys scattered throughout the world, but kept in touch through letters. Drawing on this rich correspondence, Sarah Stein, award-winning author of Extraterritorial Dreams, uses the family’s experience to trace the history of Sephardic Jews through the twentieth century, showing how individual lives were affected by world wars, shifting political boundaries, and the Holocaust—which wiped out several branches of the Levy family. Salonika, like many Mediterranean and Balkan ports, was a cultural medley difficult to imagine today. The Levys “were creatures of a polyglot empire, and nationalism wasn’t their style. Their faith was in Western progress and good will. After World War I, Sam, the journalist, had in fact written to the Versailles peace conference to propose that Salonica become “a free and neutral city administered by Jews” with a vote in the League of Nations: “a Jewish city-state that was neither Zionist nor Greek.” It was a great idea, and of course it was doomed along with the world he knew.”

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Sarah Abrevaya Stein is Professor of History, Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies, and Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and co-winner of the 2010 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, her award-winning books include Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century (2016), Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (2014), Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce(2008), and Making Jews Modern: the Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (2004).

Aron Rodrigue is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University.
He is the author of several books on the history and culture of Sephardi Jewry. He has collaborated with Sarah Stein as the co-editor of A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica: The Ladino Memoir of Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi  (2012).  Aron Rodrigue is the recipient of the Alberto Benveniste Prize (Paris) for Research in Sephardic Studies, 2011, and of the National Jewish Book Council Honor Award in Sephardic Studies, 1994. He is a member of the American Academy of Jewish Research.  He was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2013.