Jonathan Hirsch, Sina Rauschenbach, and Carsten Schapkow, Editors
Sephardic History Beyond Europe
Leipzig: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2023. ISBN: 978-3-95565-635-5
Reviewed by David Navarro1
Diaspora Studies have become an important field of academic research in the last two decades, permitting scholars to grapple with complex issues related to displacement, identity, and transnational networks. In the case of the Iberian Jewry, their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and their forced conversion in Portugal in 1497 resulted in a Sephardic diaspora that found refuge in North Africa, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the early colonies of the Americas, forging a tapestry that embodies multiple layers of cultural fusions and complexities among the Sephardim. Jonathan Hirsch, Sina Rauschenbach, and Carsten Schapkow, the editors of this volume entitled Sephardic History Beyond Europe, invite their readership to explore the various circumstances that the Iberian Jewry has endured from the end of the fifteenth century to the present day.
The first essay, titled “The Sephardim of the Atlantic World. An Early Modern Empire?,” by Jonathan Schorsch examines the settlement and development of Sephardic communities on the east coast of the Americas parallel to those well-established in Amsterdam, London, and Livorno. Schorsch argues that the numerous Spanish and Portuguese communities of Sephardim who found refuge in the Netherlands and England participated in the colonial expansion of their new host countries in the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean islands captured by the Dutch, such as Suriname, Curaçao, and St. Eustatius, or in the English colonies of Jamaica and Barbados.2 The author delves into the analysis of the religious, cultural, and commercial aspects that these Sephardic communities in the New World replicated in a manner similar to their mother communities in Europe. Synagogues served as centers of religious and cultural life, such as the Mikvé Israel in Curaçao, while the mahamad or governing body ensured the security of the communities (pp. 18, 21). Global trade routes permitted the Sephardim in the colonies to engage in the overseas trading networks of the Dutch West India Company and the Royal African Company of England through their participation in the growing and processing of sugar, achieving a success that began to wane with the migrations to other Jewish communities in Chicago, London, or Panama City in the second half of the nineteenth century.
In the second essay, “Gabriel Milan and the Sephardic Heritage of the Danish Caribbean,” Enrique Corredera Nilsson continues the discussion on the complexity of European and transatlantic Sephardic networks. The author’s argument pivots on the involvement of Sephardim in the short-lived Danish West Indies expansion of the late seventeenth century, under the enigmatic figure of Gabriel Milan.3 Examining accounts from 1753 to the early twentieth century by Mariager, Krarup, Westergaard, Terslin, and Kellenbenz, among others, the author proposes a reassessment of Milan’s life in Europe prior to his adventure in the Danish Caribbean. Corredera Nilsson’s in-depth analysis of these accounts provides a reconstruction of the early years of Gabriel Milan’s life: born around 1631 to a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin, he settled in northern Europe, living in Brussels and Amsterdam and working as a merchant and financier. He married a member of the influential Mussaphia family, which had close ties to the Danish crown, and was appointed factor-general in Amsterdam by the Danish king Christian V in 1671. Milan’s involvement with the Danish West India-Guinea Company allowed him to participate in Danish settlements in the Caribbean, where he became governor of the island of St. Thomas between 1683 and 1687, under a harsh regime in which he was accused of mismanagement and rebellion, leading to his imprisonment and execution in Copenhagen in 1689. Corredera Nilsson’s rigorous study opens up a field of research that sheds light on the complexities of the Danish West Indies and the involvement of Sephardim in Danish colonial expansion.
In the third essay of the volume, “Jewish Life in Egypt as Portrayed by the Archives of the Consulate General of Spain in Alexandria Between 1907 and 1961,” Juan Manuel Vilaplana López transports us to the Sephardic diaspora in Alexandria during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This port-city hosted a vibrant Jewish community due to the economic boom experienced with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the lucrative exports of cotton. The author examines in detail the archives of the Consulate General of Spain in Alexandria, revealing the interactions between the Spanish consular agency and the local Sephardic communities during this period, particularly the various Decree-Laws granting Spanish citizenship to Sephardim under their former protégés status (p. 59). The consular reports analyzed present an initial “cautionary” interest on behalf of the Spanish authorities in inviting the Sephardim to return to Spain. On the one hand, some consuls supported the idea of welcoming a small number of Sephardic elites who could contribute to the establishment of Spain’s international prestige in the Levant. On the other hand, they advised against the negative consequences for economic competition and religious unity that a large influx of Sephardim into the country could cause. Approximately 255 Alexandrian Sephardim obtained Spanish nationality through the two Decree-Laws approved in 1924 and 1948 (p. 71), permitting them to emigrate from Egypt to other places after the 1956 Suez Crisis and the anti-Jewish laws that followed.
In “Maimonides and the Sephardic Mediterranean. Diaspora Horizons in Times of Crisis,” Jonathan Hirsch examines the impact of the events organized by the Sephardic communities in several Mediterranean countries in 1935 to commemorate the eighth centenary of Maimonides’ birth. The celebrations took place during a period of turmoil in Europe in the face of the rise of fascism and aimed to bring together the Sephardic diaspora scattered across North African territories –Morocco, Egypt, Palestine– under French and British colonial rule. Hirsch argues that the attempts to internationalize the events were intended to strengthen a trans-regional Sephardic community and reclaim the Sephardim’s rich cultural heritage (p.82). The author explores various factors that were envisioned under these commemorations, focusing on the role of Moroccan Jewry and its attempts to revive Jewish tradition with the rest of the Sephardim in Muslim countries as a form of emancipation from French cultural influence. Issues such as the tension between colonial and national identities, the sense of cultural differentiation from the Ashkenazim, and the embrace of the Eastern Sephardim as “Mediterranean” helped strengthen this transregional Sephardic network of communities with a stronger voice in international Jewish politics (p. 95).
The final essay in the volume, “The Quincentennial of 1992 Scholarship and the Transnational Commemorations of the Jewish Expulsion from Spain—Beyond the “Sephardic Mystique,”” by Allyson Gonzalez, examines the significance of this event in the rebirth of intellectual interconnectivity that has shaped contemporary Sephardic Studies. Gonzalez argues that the commemoration of “Sepharad ’92,” along with the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival to the Americas, served to “catalyze cultural and knowledge production” in Sephardic studies that emerged from these events by a remarkable number of scholars in Spain, the United States, France, England, Turkey, and Israel, among others, in the form of films, exhibitions, conferences, and scholarship (102). This cultural renaissance initiated in the 1980s permitted Spain to reach out to international Sephardic groups and associations, leading to many initiatives in preparation for the quincentennial. Among these activities were the creation of the first two academic chairs in Judeo-Spanish at the University of Paris in 1984 and at UCLA in 1989, the Sephardic Education Center and the Salti Fund in Israel in 1979 and 1983, and the First International Congress on Turkish Jewry in 1989 (pp. 106, 108). Furthermore, multiple academic conferences were organized from the Mediterranean to Latin America, resulting in an extensive production of works by scholars such as Elena Romero, Paloma Diaz-Mas, Jane S. Gerber, Aron Rodrigue, and Esther Benbassa, among many others who continue to be cited today.
In sum, this edited volume harmoniously reflects on the vitality and relevance of current research in the field of Sephardic Studies, which is often overshadowed by research on Ashkenazim in the context of Jewish scholarship. The authors, through an extensive and rigorous archival research, successfully connect the historical and cultural features shared by the Sephardim in their multifaceted layers, contributing to a diverse spectrum in the Hebraic Studies from various focal perspectives.
1 David Navarro is a Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas State University. His field of research focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in medieval Iberia and Sephardic diaspora through the lens of exegetical analysis of literary texts and historical chronicles.
2 Although the author does not discuss the arrival of the Conversos in the Spanish colonies of the Americas, it is worth noting that the city of Monterrey, in present-day northern Mexico, was founded in 1596 by a group of Converso families led by Diego de Montemayor. See the work by Alicia Gojman Goldeberg, Los conversos en la Nueva España (Inteliprix, 2020).
3 These islands consisted of Saint Thomas, Saint John, Saint Croix, and Water Island. They were purchased by the United States in the early twentieth century and became known as the United States Virgin Islands.