A Sephardi Life in Southeastern Europe: The Autobiography and Journals of Gabriel Arie, 1863-1939

Jacket Description/Back: Autobiographical texts are rare in the Sephardi world. Gabriel Arie's writings provide a special perspective on the political, economic, and cultural changes undergone by the Eastern Sephardi community in the decades before its dissolution, in regions where it had been constituted since the expulsion from Spain in 1492. His history is a fascinating memoir of the Sephardi and Levantine bourgeoisie of the time. For his entire life, Arie - teacher, historian, community leader and businessman - was caught between East and West. Born in a small provincial town in Ottoman Bulgaria in 1863, he witnessed the disappearance of a social and political order that had lasted for centuries and its replacement by new ideas and new ways of life, which would irreversibly transform Jewish existence. A Sephardi Life in Southeastern Europe publishes in full the autobiography (covering the years 1863-1906) and journal (1906-39) of Gabriel Arie, along with selections from his letters to the Alliance Israelite Universelle. An introduction by Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue analyzes his life and examines the general and the Jewish contexts of the Levant at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Publisher Marketing: Autobiographical texts are rare in the Sephardi world. Gabriel Arie's writings provide a special perspective on the political, economic, and cultural changes undergone by the Eastern Sephardi community in the decades before its dissolution, in regions where it had been constituted since the expulsion from Spain in 1492. His history is a fascinating memoir of the Sephardi and Levantine bourgeoisie of the time. For his entire life, Arie--teacher, historian, community leader, and businessman--was caught between East and West. Born in a small provincial town in Ottoman Bulgaria in 1863, he witnessed the disappearance of a social and political order that had lasted for centuries and its replacement by new ideas and new ways of life, which would irreversibly transform Jewish existence. "A Sephardi Life in Southeastern Europe" publishes in full the autobiography (covering the years 1863-1906) and journal (1906-39) of Gabriel Arie, along with selections from his letters to the Alliance Israelite Universelle. An introduction by Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue analyzes his life and examines the general and the Jewish contexts of the Levant at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

Contributor Bio:  Rodrigue, Aron Rodrigue is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Contributor Bio:  Benbassa, Esther Jean Christophe Attias est ne en 1958. Il est directeur d'etudes ala Section des Sciences religieuses de l'Ecole pratique des hautes etudes et titulaire de la chaire d'histoire du judaisme rabbinique depuis 1998. Membre du conseil scientifique du Centre Alberto Benveniste pour les etudes et la culture sepharades (EPHE), il est chercheur au centre d'histoire moderne et contemporaine des Juifs (EPHE). En 2006, il a recu le prix Selligmann contre le racisme pour "Juifs et musulmans: Une histoire partagee, un dialogue a construire" (La Decouverte). Il a publie "Des cultures et des dieux: Reperes pour une transmission du fait relig"ieux (Fayard, 2007), avec Esther Benbassa, dans la collection Les Dieux dans la Cite, qu'ils ont codirigee aux editions Fayard. Contributor Bio:  Todd, Jane Marie Jane Marie Toddhas translated some seventy books, including "Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia", also published by the University of Chicago Press.