Jews and the Mediterranean

What does an understanding of Jewish history contribute to the study of the Mediterranean, and what can Mediterranean studies contribute to our knowledge of Jewish history? Jews and the Mediterranean considers the historical potency and uniqueness of what happens when Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi Jews meet in the Mediterranean region. By focusing on the specificity of the Jewish experience, the essays gathered in this volume emphasize human agency and culture over the length of Mediterranean history. This collection draws attention to what made Jewish people distinctive and warns against facile notions of Mediterranean connectivity, diversity, fluidity, and hybridity, presenting a new assessment of the Jewish experience in the Mediterranean.

[Jews and the Mediterranean] takes aim in part at a trope in Mediterranean studies that plays up the integration of minorities across communities, with character types of cosmopolitanism, fluidity, and diversity. The papers examine what made Jews and Jewish communities distinctive, even as they interacted with their Muslim and Christian neighbors and business partners.