We are pleased to send you the following information about this newly
published book:
The Jewish Communities of Southeastern Europe from the 15ht Century to the
End of World War II, Edited by I. K. Hassiotis, Institute for Balkan
Studies, Thessaloniki 1997.
The volume comprises 42 of the papers read at the international conference
on "The Jewish Communities of Southeastern Europe from the 15ht Century to
the End of the Second World War", which was organized by the Institute for
Balkan Studies in association with the Aristotle University's Department of
History and Archaelogy, and took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, between 30
October and 3 November 1992. The initiative for holding the conference was
to mark the fifth centenary of the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian
Peninsula in 1492, and their eventual settling in the eastern Mediterranean.
With regard to their subject matter, the papers focused on the following
areas of interest: i) The flight of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula and
western Europe in general to the eastern Mediterranean, and their early
settlements in the "Greek Levant"; ii) the organisation of the Jewish
communities, both in the early stages, when they were taking shape on
Ottoman territory, and later on, when they were becoming integrated into
the nation-states in the region; iii) the economic and social development
of the Jewish centres in south-eastern Europe, together with specific
problems relating to survival and co-existence in three tangential spheres:
the internal functioning of the communities, their intercourse with the
Christian and Moslem communities, and their relations with the central
government; iv) the Jews' economic, educational, literary, cultural, and
technological achievements; v) the ideological processes taking place both
in the context of their own ethno-religious traditions and in relation to
the ethnic ideologies and national practices of the demographic groups they
were living among; and lastly, vi) the Holocaust.
Among the contributors to the conference were: Tamar Alexander, senior
lecturer in the Hebrew Literature Deprtment, Ben-Gurion Univerity; Maria
Antonia Bel Bravo, professor at the Univeristy of Ja‰n, Spain; Steven
Bowman, professor at the University of Cincinnati, Judaic Studies Program;
Yael Feldman, associate professor at New York University; Hanna Jacobsohn,
historian at the Institute for the Research of the Jewish Diaspora, Tel
Aviv University; Yitzchak Kerem, historian, film-maker, lecturer at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Fabio Oliveri, director of the Sicilian
Institute for Jewish Studies; Shmuel Refael, lecturer in Judeo-Spanish
literature at the Bar-Ilan University, Israel; Aryeh Shmuelevitz, professor
at the University of Tel Aviv; Gilles Veinstein, professor at the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and many others.
680 pages, 65 illus. & maps
Paperback: 45 USD
Cloth: 55 USD
(postal expenses included)