The Jews of Ottoman Izmir - (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture) by Dina Danon (Paperback)

The Jews of Ottoman Izmir is a groundbreaking book that redefines our understanding of Jewish modernity in the eastern Mediterranean.

By exploring shifting attitudes towards poverty and charity in a long overlooked Sephardi community, this book challenges the notion that Jewish religious and cultural distinctiveness are incompatible with the modern age.

Through the voices of both beggars on the street and mercantile elites, this book reveals how new attitudes to poverty and class, not Judaism, most significantly framed this Sephardi community's encounter with the modern age.

With a focus on the local context of Ottoman Izmir, The Jews of Ottoman Izmir fills an important gap in the scholarship on modern Ottoman Jewish and Sephardic history, offering a unique and compelling perspective on social and political change in one of the most important Ladino-speaking communities in the Ottoman Empire.