Reading Letters from the Past
Translating for Historical Research in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies by Katharine Halls1 Sephardic Horizons, Volume 6, Number 1, 2016 One of the most exciting developments to come out of the surge of academic interest in Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry is the recent appearance of two sourcebooks which present documentary material relating to the modern history of these communities in translation. The hugely important volumes to which I refer are Zvi Ben-Dor Benite and Moshe Behar (eds), Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought (2013) and Julia Phillips Cohen and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (eds), Sephardi Lives (2014), the former taking as its subject Mizrahi intellectual history from the late 19th century and into the mid-20th century, the latter the daily life of Jews across the “Judeo-Spanish heartland of Southeastern Europe, Anatolia, and the Levant” (p.
