Dr. Sarah Abrevaya Stein: Family Papers

About Dr. Sarah Abrevaya Stein: Family Papers

After their expulsion from Spain, thousands of Sephardic families made their way to the bustling port of Salonica, then part of the Ottoman Empire, becoming the majority of the city’s residents by the early 16th century. Among them was the sprawling Levy clan and, over the centuries, as leading publishers and editors, the family chronicled modern Sephardic life across the empire.

The wars of the twentieth century, however, redrew borders and transformed the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Relatives soon emigrated, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the family, as it did close to 90 percent of the Jewish population of Salonica.

This session, based on Stein’s award-winning Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century, will trace an emblematic Sephardi journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe.

Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s Family Papers was named a Best Book of 2019 by The Economist and an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times Book Review. Professor of History and Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA, she is author of nine other books and has won both a Guggenheim Fellowship and National Jewish Book Awards.