For centuries, the Greek port city of Salonica was home to the sprawling Levy family – leading publishers and editors who helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. As the wars of the twentieth century redrew borders around them, the Levys were gradually transformed from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree.
In Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century, prize-winning Sephardic historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein uses the Levy family’s correspondence to tell the story of their sprawling journey. Join the author in conversation with Columbia University Professor of Israel and Jewish Studies Clémence Boulouque for a discussion of the book and Sephardic experiences during the Holocaust.
Watch the program below.