The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History by Dina Danon

 The Jews of Ottoman Izmir by By Dina Danon is a very valuable edition to the scholarship on modern Ottoman Jewish and Sephardic history. She offers a locally focused account of social and political change in one of the most important, yet also understudied, Ladino-speaking communities in the Ottoman She also shifts the narrative about Ottoman Jewish history in a new direction by emphasizing social class as a central framework for her analysis, and by looking, in particular, at the city's Jewish working class, at poverty, and at class conflict. 

Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. Originally spoken by Jews living in Spain it spread to the Ottoman Empire when the Spanish monarchs ordered all Jews to leave the country in 1492

"Through the lens of two crucial elements of Jewish self-government, namely its financial and leadership structures, I explore how “progress” demanded the reordering of social hierarchies along modern lines. This book traces ongoing efforts to rid the community of its most critical yet increasingly controversial source of revenue, the regressive gabela sales tax on kosher meat, which disproportionately burdened the poor. It tracks the elaboration of rationalized statutes and representative assemblies that would better address the needs of the poor and working classes and reconstructs the reversal of the longstanding rabbinic alliance with the wealthy. Undergirding all of these initiatives, as the book demonstrates, is the evolution of a vibrant and robust Ladino public sphere where the needs of el puevlo or “the people” were constantly debated with recourse to an expanding modern vocabulary of “rights.” From The Introduction 

A primary focus is on the reactions the community to poverty, particularly to beggers. Danon begins about 1898.

Izmir was an important port city. Danon details the role of Jews in the economy of the city.

This is a work of serious scholarship. I strongly recommend it to those who already possess a good bit of knowledge about European Jewish history.

Dina Danon is an assistant professor of Judaic studies at Binghamton University. While her teaching interests span the full range of Jewish history, she focuses on the Sephardi and Mizrahi communities of the Mediterranean world. Currently, she is researching the nature, function, and historical significance of the marriage marketplace in the Sephardi world during the late Ottoman period.

Danon received her PhD from Stanford University and was recently selected as one of six emerging scholars to participate in the Paula E. Hyman Mentorship Program of the Association for Jewish Studies.

Mel Ulm