The Sephardic Library is a curated guide to the best books on Sephardic and Mizrahi life: the history of our communities from Spain and Portugal to North Africa, the Ottoman lands, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Americas; Torah and halakha from Maran to Hakham Ovadia Yosef; siddurim and liturgy; literature and memoir; Ladino; and the Sephardic kitchen. Start with our picks below, or browse by section. Know a book that belongs here? Tell us.
New to Sephardic history and tradition? Begin with these.
Sephardic History
Norman A. Stillman · 1979
A narrative history paired with translated primary sources, tracing Jewish life under Islam from Muhammad's era to the early modern period. Essential for understanding Sephardi and Mizrahi roots.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue · 2000
The standard history of the Judeo-Spanish diaspora in the Ottoman Balkans and Turkey, from the Iberian expulsions to the Holocaust and emigration.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Marc D. Angel · 2006
Rabbi Angel draws on Ottoman Sephardic sermons, customs and folk wisdom to reconstruct the religious values that guided everyday life, offering a model of warm, grounded piety.
Spain & Portugal
Jane S. Gerber · 1994
The best single-volume overview of Sephardic history, from Roman Iberia and the Golden Age through the Expulsion and the diaspora that carried Sepharad to the Ottoman lands, North Africa, and the Americas.
Siddurim & Liturgy
ArtScroll editorial staff (Sephardic liturgy team) · 2019
A full Hebrew-English siddur for weekdays and Shabbat in the Edot HaMizrah rite. It has Sephardic transliteration, halakhot following Sephardic poskim beside the prayers, and notes on how communities differ.
North Africa & Egypt
Lucette Lagnado · 2008
A daughter's memoir of her dashing father, a Cairo boulevardier whose world collapsed when the family fled Egypt for Paris and then a hard new life in Brooklyn.
Sephardic Kitchen
Claudia Roden · 1996
Roden's monumental history-cookbook; its Sephardi half alone, with recipes from Morocco to Iraq, is an essential guide to the cuisines of the Jewish Mediterranean.
Spain & Portugal
María Rosa Menocal · 2003
An accessible, lyrical history of al-Andalus, where Jewish poets, philosophers and courtiers flourished alongside Muslims and Christians before the Reconquista.
115 books
Sephardic History
Norman A. Stillman (executive editor) · 2010
A five-volume reference with over 2,000 entries on Jewish life across Muslim lands, from Morocco to Iran, past and present. An authoritative starting point for nearly any question about Sephardi and Mizrahi history.
Sephardic History
Bernard Dov Cooperman and Zvi Zohar (eds.) · 2013
Scholarly essays exploring how Jews and Muslims lived, worked, and argued alongside one another across centuries, offering nuanced context for the world that shaped Sephardi and Mizrahi communities.
Sephardic History
Aron Rodrigue · 2003
Rodrigue draws on Alliance Israélite Universelle teachers' letters to show how Sephardi and Eastern Jewish communities from the Balkans to North Africa met modernity, Westernization, and colonial change.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Avigdor Levy (ed.) · 1994
A massive collection of studies on Jewish life under Ottoman rule, from the welcome of Iberian exiles in 1492 to the empire's end, covering community, economy, law, and culture.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Houman Sarshar (ed.) · 2002
A richly illustrated survey of Iranian Jewry's long history, religious life, art, music, and customs, celebrating one of the oldest Jewish communities of the East.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Orit Bashkin · 2012
Bashkin recovers the story of Iraqi Jews who saw themselves as Arab patriots, writers, and intellectuals in Baghdad before the upheavals of 1941 and the mass exodus of 1950–51.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Julia Phillips Cohen · 2016
Cohen shows how Ottoman Sephardi Jews in the nineteenth century embraced imperial citizenship and loyalty, reshaping what it meant to be both Jewish and Ottoman.
The Americas
Joseph M. Papo · 1987
A history of Sephardi immigrants in the United States and their long, often frustrated efforts to build unified communal organizations across Ladino, Greek, and Arabic-speaking groups.
The Americas
Aviva Ben-Ur · 2012
A sweeping account of Sephardi Jews in America from colonial-era Portuguese congregations to twentieth-century Ottoman, Ladino-speaking immigrants and their struggle for recognition.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Kerem Tınaz and Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano (eds.) · 2021
Essays built around the University of Washington's Sephardic Studies Digital Collection, showing how family heirlooms, letters, and music preserve the memory of Ottoman Jewish migration to America.
Literature & Memoir
Ilan Stavans (ed.) · 2005
An anthology of modern Sephardi writers from across the diaspora, including poetry, fiction, and memoir, offering a literary map of Sephardi experience in many languages and places.
North Africa & Egypt
Harvey E. Goldberg · 1990
An anthropologist's portrait of Libyan Jewish communities and their everyday ties, rivalries, and rituals with Muslim neighbors before the community's departure.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Tomer Levi · 2012
Traces how Beirut's small Jewish community grew into a cosmopolitan Levantine center, with schools, institutions, and identities shaped by Ottoman and French rule.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Sarah Abrevaya Stein · 2020
Following a Salonican family's letters across a century of war, migration, and Holocaust, Stein tells the intimate story of how one Sephardi clan scattered across the world.
North Africa & Egypt
Renzo De Felice (trans. Judith Roumani) · 1985
A detailed history of Libyan Jewry from late Ottoman rule through Italian colonialism, World War II, and the community's final exodus after 1967.
Torah, Halakha & Thought
Grace Aguilar (ed. Mayer I. Gruber) · 2013
A pioneering 1845 study of biblical and later Jewish women by an English writer of Portuguese Sephardi descent, arguing for women's dignity and spiritual role in Judaism.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Robert Brody · 1998
Brody explains how the Babylonian Geonim led world Jewry, shaped halakha and Talmud study, and laid foundations later inherited by the scholars of Spain and North Africa.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Saba Soomekh · 2013
Through interviews across three generations, Soomekh explores how Iranian Jewish women have practiced and redefined religion and tradition from Pahlavi-era Iran to Los Angeles.
North Africa & Egypt
Nina B. Lichtenstein · 2017
Lichtenstein examines memoirs and fiction by Jewish women from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, highlighting how they remember home, exile, and identity after leaving North Africa.
Spain & Portugal
Eliyahu Ashtor · 1992
A classic, detailed history of Jewish life in al-Andalus, from political leaders and scholars to communities and culture during the so-called golden age.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Houman M. Sarshar (ed.) · 2014
Scholarly essays on Iranian Jewish history, religious practice, language, and culture from antiquity to the modern era, a companion to Esther's Children.
Sephardic History
Norman A. Stillman · 1979
A narrative history paired with translated primary sources, tracing Jewish life under Islam from Muhammad's era to the early modern period. Essential for understanding Sephardi and Mizrahi roots.
Sephardic History
S. D. Goitein · 1955
The great historian of the Cairo Geniza surveys centuries of Jewish-Arab cultural interaction, from shared language and ideas to the medieval symbiosis that nourished Sephardi civilization.
North Africa & Egypt
S. D. Goitein (abridged and edited by Jacob Lassner) · 2003
A one-volume distillation of Goitein's landmark study of the Cairo Geniza, reconstructing the trade, family life, law and faith of medieval Jews across the Arabic-speaking Mediterranean.
Spain & Portugal
Haim Beinart (ed.) · 1992
A two-volume collection of scholarly essays covering the law, literature, thought, art and communal life of Spanish Jewry and its diaspora after 1492.
Spain & Portugal
Andrée Aelion Brooks · 2002
A lively biography of Doña Gracia Nasi, the converso banker who ran a secret escape network for persecuted New Christians and became a leader of Ottoman Jewry.
Torah, Halakha & Thought
Marc D. Angel · 1991
Rabbi Marc Angel surveys how Sephardic rabbis and thinkers responded to exile and modernity from 1492 onward, drawing a tolerant, humane religious outlook from their writings.
Spain & Portugal
Hyam Maccoby (ed. and trans.) · 1993
Translations and analysis of the great medieval disputations, including Nahmanides at Barcelona and the Tortosa debate, showing how Iberian Jews defended their faith under pressure.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue · 2000
The standard history of the Judeo-Spanish diaspora in the Ottoman Balkans and Turkey, from the Iberian expulsions to the Holocaust and emigration.
Spain & Portugal
José Faur · 1992
José Faur argues that the converso experience, caught between Jewish and Christian worlds, helped shape modern skepticism and secular thought in early modern Europe.
Spain & Portugal
Benjamin R. Gampel (ed.) · 1998
Essays by leading scholars on how Iberian Jews and conversos endured the 1391 riots, the Expulsion and dispersion, and still produced remarkable culture across the Sephardic world.
North Africa & Egypt
Shlomo Deshen · 1989
An anthropologist reconstructs everyday Jewish communal life in eighteenth and nineteenth century Morocco from rabbinic responsa, covering leadership, economics, family and relations with Muslim neighbors.
North Africa & Egypt
Rachel Simon · 1992
A study of how Libyan Jewish women's education, work, religious roles and family life shifted under Ottoman, Italian and British rule while tradition remained central.
North Africa & Egypt
Gudrun Krämer · 1989
A detailed social and political history of Egypt's diverse Jewish communities, from their cosmopolitan heyday through rising nationalism to the crises that ended Jewish life there.
North Africa & Egypt
Lyn Julius · 2018
An accessible account of the mass flight of Jews from Arab countries in the twentieth century, why it happened, and why the story remains largely untold.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Mehrdad Amanat · 2013
Explores why some nineteenth century Iranian Jews converted to Islam or the Baha'i faith, illuminating the pressures and choices facing Persian Jewry in a changing society.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Dina Danon · 2020
A social history of Izmir's Ladino-speaking Jews in the late Ottoman era, showing how poverty, charity and class tensions reshaped a major Sephardic community.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Tudor Parfitt · 1996
Traces the hardships of Yemenite Jews in the early twentieth century and the journeys, culminating in Operation Magic Carpet, that brought nearly the entire community to Israel.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Yaron Harel · 2014
Examines Jewish communities of Damascus, Aleppo and Beirut through the upheavals of the mid-nineteenth century, including the Damascus Affair, reform and Western influence.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Devin E. Naar · 2016
How the 'Jerusalem of the Balkans' remade itself as Salonica passed from Ottoman to Greek rule, drawing on Ladino sources to recover the community before its destruction.
The Americas
Margalit Bejarano and Edna Aizenberg (eds.) · 2012
Essays on how Sephardic communities from New York to Buenos Aires preserve, adapt and reimagine their heritage through religion, language, literature and community life.
Genealogy
Jeffrey S. Malka · 2009
The essential guide to tracing Sephardic family roots, with background on community histories, surnames, archives and research strategies across the Sephardic diaspora.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Julia Phillips Cohen and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (eds.) · 2014
More than a hundred translated letters, memoirs, newspaper pieces and documents that let Ottoman Sephardic Jews and their emigrant descendants speak in their own voices.
North Africa & Egypt
Michel Abitbol · 1989
A pioneering account of how Vichy laws, internment and Axis occupation affected the Jews of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, a chapter often missing from Holocaust histories.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Nissim Rejwan · 2010
A sweeping history of Iraqi Jewry from the Babylonian exile through its golden ages to the twentieth century exodus, written by a Baghdad-born scholar.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Daniel Tsadik · 2007
A close study of how Qajar-era Iranian Jews navigated Shi'i legal restrictions, persecution and growing European intervention. Essential background for anyone tracing Persian Jewish family history.
Spain & Portugal
Yitzhak Baer
The classic two-volume history of Jewish life in the Christian kingdoms of Iberia, from the Reconquista to the Expulsion. Still the foundational narrative of how Sephardic Spain rose and fell.
Spain & Portugal
Yom Tov Assis · 2008
A detailed portrait of Jewish communal life, institutions and relations with the Crown in thirteenth-century Aragon, when Iberian Jewry was at its most confident and creative.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Matthias B. Lehmann · 2005
Explores the Ladino musar and ethical literature that rabbis wrote for ordinary Ottoman Sephardim, showing how works like Me'am Lo'ez shaped popular religious life.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Bernard Lewis · 2014
A sweeping survey of Jewish life under Muslim rule from the rise of Islam to modern times, weighing tolerance against discrimination. A useful frame for Sephardic and Mizrahi history.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Marc D. Angel · 2006
Rabbi Angel draws on Ottoman Sephardic sermons, customs and folk wisdom to reconstruct the religious values that guided everyday life, offering a model of warm, grounded piety.
The Americas
Devi Mays · 2020
Follows Ottoman Sephardim who migrated to Mexico, France and beyond, using family networks and creative paperwork to cross borders. Illuminating for anyone researching emigrant ancestors.
North Africa & Egypt
Emily Benichou Gottreich and Daniel J. Schroeter (eds.) · 2011
Essays by leading scholars on Jewish life in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, from religion and law to music and colonial politics, recentering the Maghreb in Jewish history.
Literature & Memoir
Olga Borovaya · 2012
Maps the boom of Ladino newspapers, novels and plays in Salonika, Istanbul and Izmir, showing how Sephardim built a modern secular culture in their own language.
North Africa & Egypt
Michael M. Laskier · 1983
Traces a century of French-Jewish schooling in Morocco and how the Alliance reshaped Moroccan Jewish identity, opportunity and politics up to independence and mass emigration.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Zvi Zohar · 2013
Shows how Sephardic and Middle Eastern rabbis met modernity with bold, flexible halakhic thinking, challenging the image of a static tradition. Valuable for readers of Sephardic legal thought.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Eli S. Malka · 1997
A memoir-history of the small Jewish community of Sudan, largely Sephardic, from its origins under the Mahdi through its dispersal. A rare record of a vanished community.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Houman M. Sarshar (ed.) · 2011
Collects the Encyclopaedia Iranica's authoritative entries on Persian Jewish communities across eras and cities, a compact reference for history, culture and family research.
The Americas
Marc D. Angel · 1982
Tells the story of Ladino-speaking immigrants in early twentieth-century America through the Ladino newspaper La America and its editor Moise Gadol. A cornerstone of American Sephardic history.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Isaac Jack Lévy and Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt · 2001
Documents the healing rites, prayers and remedies Sephardic women practiced in the Ottoman world and America, preserving a hidden layer of women's religious knowledge.
Ladino
Renée Levine Melammed · 2013
Presents a Salonika survivor's Ladino poems about daily life, gossip and the Holocaust, with translation and commentary. A vivid women's voice from the lost Sephardic capital.
The Americas
Hank Halio · 1996
Warm, humorous stories of growing up among Ladino-speaking immigrants in America, evoking the language, food and family life of the Sephardic neighborhood.
Sephardic History
Harvey E. Goldberg (ed.) · 1996
A wide-ranging essay collection on Sephardic and Mizrahi communities from Morocco to Iran in modern times, covering religion, migration, language and identity.
Spain & Portugal
Haim Beinart · 1982
Built on Inquisition trial records, this study reconstructs the lives and secret Jewish practices of conversos in Ciudad Real, showing how the Holy Office targeted New Christians.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Reeva Spector Simon, Michael Menachem Laskier, and Sara Reguer (eds.) · 2003
A reference volume surveying each Jewish community from Morocco to Iran in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with thematic chapters on education, women and Zionism.
Sephardic History
Marc D. Angel (ed.) · 1980
Essays on Sephardic history, literature, folklore and religious life, gathered in memory of a founder of Sephardic studies in America. A snapshot of the field's early scholarship.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Aron Rodrigue · 1990
Explains how Alliance schools Westernized Ottoman Sephardim, spreading French and reshaping community life, and why the project unraveled after the empire's fall.
Spain & Portugal
Jane S. Gerber · 1994
The best single-volume overview of Sephardic history, from Roman Iberia and the Golden Age through the Expulsion and the diaspora that carried Sepharad to the Ottoman lands, North Africa, and the Americas.
Spain & Portugal
Yehuda HaLevi; trans. and annotated by N. Daniel Korobkin · 2000
HaLevi's dialogue between a Khazar king and a rabbi, defending Judaism through history and experience rather than abstract proof. This is a readable modern English translation with helpful notes.
Torah, Halakha & Thought
Moses Maimonides; trans. M. Friedländer · 1956
Rambam's great attempt to reconcile Torah with philosophy. Friedländer's complete one-volume translation is the most affordable way into the work.
Torah, Halakha & Thought
Isadore Twersky (ed.) · 1972
Selections from the Mishneh Torah, the Guide, the commentary on the Mishnah, and Rambam's letters. A Harvard scholar edited and introduced them, which makes this the classic entry point to Rambam.
North Africa & Egypt
Rabbi Chayim ben Attar; trans. Eliyahu Munk · 1999
The Moroccan-born kabbalist's beloved Torah commentary, which joins plain sense, halakhic logic and mystical insight, in a complete five-volume English translation.
Spain & Portugal
Nachmanides; trans. Charles B. Chavel
The Catalonian sage's foundational Torah commentary, which weighs Rashi and Ibn Ezra and opens windows onto Kabbalah. Chavel's annotated translation remains the standard English edition.
Torah, Halakha & Thought
Rabbi Yaakov Culi; trans. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan · 1977
The great Ladino encyclopedia of Torah, Midrash, halakha and ethics, first written in 1730 for ordinary Ottoman Sephardim. Kaplan and others translated it into English.
Spain & Portugal
Bahya ibn Paquda; trans. Avraham Yaakov Finkel · 1998
The eleventh-century Saragossa classic on the inner life: trust in God, humility, repentance and love of God. This translation is in clear, modern English.
Torah, Halakha & Thought
Marc D. Angel · 2015
A warm introduction to core Jewish beliefs and practice from the Sephardic tradition, which values reason, moderation and compassion over rigidity.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Marc D. Angel and Hayyim J. Angel · 2006
A study of the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv: his life and his bold, humane rulings on modernity, rabbinic authority, custom and the Jewish state.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Yehuda Azoulay · 2014
A full English biography of Hacham Ovadia Yosef, drawn largely from his own lectures and responsa. It shows how he worked to restore the authority of Maran's rulings for Sephardim everywhere.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Yehuda Azoulay · 2011
A biography of Baghdad's Hacham Yosef Haim, whose Ben Ish Hai still guides Sephardic practice, covering his scholarship, his Kabbalah and his influence on communities.
Torah, Halakha & Thought
Rabbi Yosef Chaim (Ben Ish Chai); trans. Moshe Schapiro
The Ben Ish Hai's guide to halakha, prayer, home life and character, written in Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic for the women of his community and now in English.
Siddurim & Liturgy
ArtScroll editorial staff (Sephardic liturgy team) · 2019
A full Hebrew-English siddur for weekdays and Shabbat in the Edot HaMizrah rite. It has Sephardic transliteration, halakhot following Sephardic poskim beside the prayers, and notes on how communities differ.
Siddurim & Liturgy
ArtScroll editorial staff · 2025
A companion to the ArtScroll Sephardic Siddur for Pesah, Shavuot and Sukkot, with translation, transliteration and the laws and customs of the various Sephardic communities.
Siddurim & Liturgy
ArtScroll editorial staff; overview by Rabbi Nosson Scherman · 2026
The Sephardic Selihot recited from Elul through Yom Kippur, with Hebrew text, translation, commentary on the piyyutim, and notes on community customs.
Siddurim & Liturgy
Rabbi Eli Mansour and Rabbi David Sutton; ed. Rabbi Hillel Yarmove · 2006
A Hebrew-English Haggadah with commentary, stories, laws and customs of the Edot HaMizrah, from Rambam to Hacham Ovadia Yosef.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Marc D. Angel (trans. and commentary) · 1988
The Haggadah in the Sephardic rite with a fresh translation and a commentary rich in Judeo-Spanish customs, songs and family memories.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Shalom Meir Wallach; trans. Sarah Mushka Honig · 1996
The Pesah Haggadah with commentary drawn from the Ben Ish Hai's teachings, including his insights into the Seder's symbols and rituals.
Siddurim & Liturgy
Rabbi Yaakov Culi tradition; trans. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan
The Me'am Lo'ez Haggadah: the Sephardic Seder with the Ladino anthology's explanations, Midrashim and laws for each step of the evening.
North Africa & Egypt
André Aciman · 2007
Aciman's witty, elegiac portrait of his eccentric Sephardic family in cosmopolitan Alexandria, from the colorful matriarchs to the final departure after Suez.
North Africa & Egypt
Lucette Lagnado · 2008
A daughter's memoir of her dashing father, a Cairo boulevardier whose world collapsed when the family fled Egypt for Paris and then a hard new life in Brooklyn.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
A. B. Yehoshua (trans. Hillel Halkin) · 1993
A novel told in five one-sided conversations, tracing a Sephardic Jerusalem family backward through two centuries, from 1980s Israel to 1840s Athens.
Spain & Portugal
Peter Cole (trans. and ed.) · 2007
A landmark anthology rendering five centuries of Andalusian Hebrew verse, from Shmuel HaNagid and Ibn Gabirol to Yehuda HaLevi, into vivid modern English.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Ariel Sabar · 2009
An American journalist retraces his father's childhood among the Aramaic-speaking Jews of Zakho, Kurdistan, and the family's uprooting to Israel and California.
North Africa & Egypt
Albert Memmi · 1992
Memmi's semi-autobiographical classic about a poor Jewish boy in Tunis caught between the ghetto, French schooling and Arab society, ending under Nazi occupation.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Ayelet Tsabari · 2016
Short stories centered on Mizrahi Israelis, many of Yemeni descent, navigating family, war, and belonging in Israel and abroad. Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Michael Frank (illus. Maira Kalman) · 2022
Built from years of Saturday conversations, this portrait of Stella Levi recreates the Ladino-speaking Juderia of Rhodes and her survival of Auschwitz.
The Americas
Ruth Behar · 2013
The anthropologist reflects on being a Cuban Jewish immigrant with Sephardic and Ashkenazi roots, and her repeated returns to Cuba, Spain, and Turkey.
Ladino
Matilda Koen-Sarano (trans. David Herman) · 2003
Over 200 funny, sly tales of Joha, the beloved fool-and-sage of Ladino folklore, gathered from Judeo-Spanish storytellers and translated into English.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Matilda Koén-Sarano (trans. Reginetta Haboucha) · 2004
A collection of Judeo-Spanish folktales recorded from Sephardic tellers in Israel, with notes placing each tale in its folklore tradition.
Ladino
Elli Kohen and Dahlia Kohen-Gordon · 2000
The standard English-language Ladino dictionary, with thousands of entries plus cultural notes on Sephardic customs, expressions and history.
Ladino
Alla Markova · 2018
A practical self-study course in Judeo-Spanish with grammar, dialogues, exercises and downloadable audio, plus short essays on Sephardic culture.
Ottoman Lands & Balkans
Isaac Jack Lévy (trans.) · 1999
Ladino poems by Sephardic survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust, presented with English translations and commentary on the destroyed communities of Salonika and Rhodes.
Sephardic Kitchen
Claudia Roden · 1996
Roden's monumental history-cookbook; its Sephardi half alone, with recipes from Morocco to Iraq, is an essential guide to the cuisines of the Jewish Mediterranean.
Sephardic Kitchen
Joyce Goldstein · 2000
Recipes from the Sephardic diaspora of Turkey, Greece, Italy and North Africa, each tied to the history of the conversos and exiles who carried them.
Sephardic Kitchen
Gil Marks · 2005
A wide-ranging vegetarian collection rich in Sephardic and Mizrahi dishes, with Marks' trademark historical notes on where each recipe came from.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Poopa Dweck · 2007
A lavish record of Halabi Jewish cooking as preserved in Brooklyn's Syrian community, with recipes, holiday customs and family photographs.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Jennifer Felicia Abadi · 2002
Home-style Syrian Jewish recipes and family stories handed down from the author's grandmother, from kibbeh to Sabbath dishes.
Spain & Portugal
Hélène Jawhara Piñer · 2021
A historian reconstructs Sephardic dishes from medieval Andalusian manuscripts and Inquisition records, offering cookable recipes with their documentary backstory.
Sephardic Kitchen
Joan Nathan · 2017
Global Jewish cooking with strong Sephardic and Mizrahi coverage, from Spain and Morocco to India and Iran, told through Nathan's travels and interviews.
Iraq, Iran, Syria & Yemen
Kay Kaufman Shelemay · 1998
An ethnomusicologist explores the pizmonim, Syrian Jewish paraliturgical songs set to Arabic maqam, and how they carry memory from Aleppo to Brooklyn.
Siddurim & Liturgy
Mark L. Kligman · 2009
A study of how Syrian Jewish cantors match the weekly Shabbat prayers to Arabic maqamat, revealing a living Mizrahi musical-liturgical system.
The Americas
Ruth Behar (illus. Devon Holzwarth) · 2022
Estrella helps her great-aunt, a Sephardic Jew from Cuba, move from her Miami Beach home, learning the Ladino words and customs Tía Fortuna carries with her.
For Kids
Ruth Behar · 2024
A middle-grade novel following four generations of Sephardic girls, from the 1492 expulsion to Ottoman Turkey, Cuba, and Miami, linked by music and memory.
Ladino
Sarah Aroeste (illus. Ayesha L. Rubio) · 2020
A bilingual Ladino-English board book walking toddlers through a Sephardic family's Shabbat, from preparations to the Friday-night table.
Ladino
Sarah Aroeste (illus. Taia Morley) · 2023
A picture book introducing young readers to Ladino words and Sephardic expressions of blessing and good luck for life's everyday moments.
Spain & Portugal
María Rosa Menocal · 2003
An accessible, lyrical history of al-Andalus, where Jewish poets, philosophers and courtiers flourished alongside Muslims and Christians before the Reconquista.
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