Cities of Splendor book cover image

Jane Gerber 

Cities of Splendor in the Shaping of Sephardi History

Liverpool: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2020,  ISBN: 9781904113300 

Reviewed by Carsten Schapkow*

In this highly readable and enlightening volume, Jane Gerber, Professor Emerita of History and Director of the Institute for Sephardic Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, provides an insightful account of Sephardic identities from the tenth until the seventeenth century in cities such as Cordova, Toledo, Safed, Venice, Istanbul, Salonica, and Amsterdam. Based on primary and secondary sources in multiple languages, Gerber paints an illuminating picture of a vivid Jewish sub-culture always in contact with the non-Jewish, Christian and Muslim, surroundings. This history was first of all one of migration, beginning with Jews from North Africa to Al-Andalus and, in Gerber’s account, concluding with Amsterdam’s multiple Jewish communities during the second half of the seventeenth century.

Following the expulsions of 1492 and 1496 from Spain and Portugal respectively, differences between a Western and an Eastern Sephardic Diaspora emerged. In the following two hundred years, these distinctions became more specific. Whereas Sephardic Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean were “drawing closer to [their] Jewish roots and moving slowly towards the creation of a Sephardic diaspora,” those in the West were “either searching for its lost identity” and thus consequently were “growing increasingly estranged from its ancestral traditions.” (86). The main strength of the book is that Gerber presents the characteristics of Sephardic history with all its facets and transnational connections. The wealth of Sephardic culture was built on many different skills, with their multi-linguistic capabilities arguably being the most important. Sephardic Jews were aware that they played a constituent part in the heritage of pre-modern Spain in the sciences, medicine, literature - an awareness that filled them with pride which they took with them to the countries of their exile. Additionally, the relevance of economic possibilities for the exiled Sephardic communities was key as it had been in pre-modern Spain.

What in particular stands out in the book is the way Sephardic Jews over the centuries made these cities explicitly “Sephardic” because of their role as intermediaries between different communities in these venues. To be sure, this specific role of Sephardim had been discussed in many scholarly publications. These earlier publications mainly focused on the cultural sphere, which was almost always described correctly as an elite encounter with non-Jewish literature, most notably remembered with Arabic poetry. However, when emphasizing the connectedness with the histories of these eminent cities from the middle ages until the early modern period, Gerber does offer a glimpse of the overall picture of this fascinating encounter between Jewish culture and its non-Jewish, Christian and Muslim, counterparts. As Gerber points out, Jews in Cordova were completely Arabized around the year 1000 and also became stellar inventors of Hebrew poetry. But more importantly Gerber makes us aware of the new economic possibilities, skills, and crafts that emerged in Cordova and helped to create a Jewish society at large that was also non-elite and consisted of farmers and artisans, too. On various levels of their existence these Sephardim developed somewhat fluid identities which originated in “real and imagined genealogies” (27) in the context of an invented noble lineage (26). This can be seen quite tellingly, for instance, when Sephardic Jews fled from Cordova to Toledo where they encountered both Ashkenazi and Christian culture. During that time, a Sephardic cultural identity began to emerge around the thirteenth century, as Gerber shows. And it is again the socioeconomic situation without any restrictions in place of residence and owning property that helped to establish this distinct identity.

Turning to the third chapter on the city of Safed, Gerber highlights the mobility of the Sephardim and other Jews in the city during the course of the sixteenth century. This was an era of messianic expectations in which kabbalistic thinking played a significant role (109-118). In this context, Gerber portrays Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi and Don Joseph Nasi as early Zionists (119). In the chapter on Venice, Gerber reveals, “several Jewish subcultures coexisted under one communal umbrella” […] “vis a vis the outside world and the Venetian authorities” (129). According to Gerber, the relationship between Spanish and Portuguese refugees in these places of the diaspora has not yet been researched. Gerber asserts that much could be discovered in Italian archives regarding Doña Gracia’s stay in Italy before she escaped to the Ottoman Empire. Besides Doña Gracia’s outstanding role, Gerber also emphasizes the overall unique and independent role of Sephardic women in Venice focusing, for instance, on the poet Sara Copia Sullam (156-158) and her literary exchanges with Christian men. In sum, Venice did function as a lieu de mémoire in European and Jewish consciousness (168) and was also a place that renewed Sephardic life.

Shifting to Ottoman Istanbul and Salonica, the broader political context is that of the sürgün policy (178f.), which relocated different populations in which the dhimmi-status of the Jews (and other non-Muslims) was key. Gerber makes clear that the Ottoman policy towards the Jews was not friendly but inclined Jews to convert to Islam. As had been the case in Venice, patterns of Jewish community organization were based on geographic origin and language (184-189), which in consequence helped to create a “rich sub-culture in their Judeo-Spanish dialect” (186). This Sephardic group identity included conversos and focused primarily on cultural categories of dignity and honor (195). When the economic situation deteriorated by the end of the sixteenth century and the Ottoman Empire eventually destabilized, the Sephardim suffered economically, but kept their communities alive.

In the case of Amsterdam, migration played a dominant role in where the Sephardic Jews settled, too. More importantly, for Amsterdam’s Sephardic Jews, Venice played an important role when establishing a Jewish community (234-235). In Amsterdam, members of the Portuguese naçao held dear the idea of a self-perceived supremacy over other Jews (232). As Gerber concludes, “romance, myth, and the memory of a historic part in Sepharad” (258) helped to create what it meant to be Sephardic. Gerber notes, however, that this distinct but also hybrid culture was decisively disconnected from any Jewish culture as well as from that of their Sephardic brethren in the Ottoman Empire (231).

Jane Gerber’s book, Cities of Splendor in the Shaping of Sephardi History, will be of great value for many scholars and students of Sephardic and Jewish history. Moreover, it offers profound insight for readers in medieval and early modern (economic) history. It will be interesting to see how this comparative history might take further shape from the eighteenth until the twentieth centuries and how these cities’ distinct Sephardic outlook did change and modernize over time.


* Carsten Schapkow is L.R. Brammer Jr. Presidential Professor in the Department of History and the Schusterman Center for Judaic and Israel Studies at the University of Oklahoma where he also is the Director of the Center for the Study of Nationalism. In the 2020-21academic year he served as Visiting Professor at the University of Potsdam and the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg. His most recent book is Role Model and Countermodel: The Golden Age of Iberian Jewry and German-Jewish Culture during the Era of Emancipation. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016.

Copyright 2024 by Sephardic Horizons, all rights reserved. ISSN Number 2158-1800