Ottoman Jewry

Leadership, Charity, and Literacy
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-90-04-71196-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 12, 272 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 526 g

Reihe: Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies

This book is a history of Ottoman Jews that challenges prevailing assumptions about Jews’ arrival in the empire, their relations with Muslims, and the role of religious and lay leaders. The book argues that rabbis played a less prominent role as communal and spiritual leaders than we have thought; and that the religious community was one of several frameworks within which Ottoman Jews operated. A focus on charitable and educational communal practices shows that with time Jews preferred to avoid the scrutiny of rabbis and the community, leading to private initiatives that undermined rabbinical and lay authority.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ayalon, Yaron

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

List of Figures and Tables

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 Who Were Ottoman Jews?

2 Ottoman Jewish History: the State of the Field

3 What This Book Does Not Do

4 Book Structure

1 Ottoman Jewry, Origins and Growth

1 One Overplayed Letter

2 The Sephardim Arrive

3 The Textile Industry and the Decline of Safed

4 Ottoman Jews and the Environment

2 Ottoman Jewry, Opportunities and Crises

1 Demography and Economy

2 The Environment, Again: Jewish Settlement Patterns and the Little Ice Age

3 Izmir and Aleppo

4 Hardships and Prophecy

5 Expanding Opportunities in the Eighteenth Century

3 Communal Leadership, Rabbis, and Others

1 Rabbis in the Existing Scholarship

2 Jews in Ottoman Society

3 The Frankos Affair

4 Toward a Model of Communal Leadership

4 Poor Relief and Communal Authority

1 Foundations of Jewish Charity

2 Public Charity

3 Semi-public Charity

4 Private Charity

5 Why Give?

6 Charitable Societies and the Weakening of Communal Authority

5 Education, Reading, and Rabbinical Authority

1 Education

2 Intellectual Circles

3 The Inner Circle and Its Library

4 The Value of Books

5 The End of Knowledge Monopoly

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Yaron Ayalon, Ph.D. (2009), Princeton University, is Associate Professor at the College of Charleston. He has written many articles on Jewish and Ottoman history, and a monograph, Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire: Plague, Famine, and Other Misfortunes (Cambridge, 2014)