A Sephardi life in Southeastern Europe
Subtitle: the autobiography and journal of Gabriel Arié, 1863-1939
By: edited by Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue ; translated by Jane Marie Todd.
Contributors: Benbassa, Esther.; Rodrigue, Aron.
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Seattle
Language: eng
Number of pages: 317
Subjects: Arié, Gabriel, 1863-1939.; Jews -- Bulgaria -- Sofia -- Biography.; Sephardim -- Bulgaria -- Sofia -- Biography.; Sofia (Bulgaria) -- Biography.
Description: Autobiographical texts are rare in the Sephardi world. Gabriel Arie's writings provide a special perspective on the political, economic, and cultural changes undergone by the Eastern Sephardi community in the decades before its dissolution, in regions where it had been constituted since the expulsion from Spain in 1492. His history is a fascinating memoir of the Sephardi and Levantine bourgeoisie of the time.

For his entire life, Arie - teacher, historian, community leader and businessman - was caught between East and West. Born in a small provincial town in Ottoman Bulgaria in 1863, he witnessed the disappearance of a social and political order that had lasted for centuries and its replacement by new ideas and new ways of life, which would irreversibly transform Jewish existence.

A Sephardi Life in Southeastern Europe publishes in full the autobiography (covering the years 1863-1906) and journal (1906-39) of Gabriel Arie, along with selections from his letters to the Alliance Israelite Universelle. An introduction by Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue analyzes his life and examines the general and the Jewish contexts of the Levant at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 294-304) and indexes.
"A Samuel and Althea Stroum book."