Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of Monastir, 1893-1943 (review)

The world of the Sephardim, descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century, has been fertile ground for studies of traditional culture. A flurry of publications came forth about 100 years ago based upon linguistic collections, especially of ballad texts, proverbs, and folk narratives. The most noted of these early collections were taken from community members in the Ottoman Serbian center of Monastir, or Bitola. The classic works of Cynthia Crews and Max Luria helped greatly in preserving these significant oral texts.

Mark Cohen's work of love,Last Century of a Sephardic Community, describes the historical context in which Monastir thrived and declined. This in-depth study delves into a variety of archival and published sources to bring together a coherent story of a community in the shadows of the more populated Sephardic centers, Salonica and Constantinople.

The thick volume begins with a general history of Monastir in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. The starting date, 1839, was chosen because it marks the "rebirth" of the city after a devastating fire in 1835. This summary is followed by an introduction to Sephardic traditional culture in Monastir. The neighborhood, or mahalle, is described in detail, including its physical appearance and the characters and rich oral traditions that filled its streets. Generous examples of proverbs (refranes), songs (kantigas), and ballads (romances) are woven into the rich description of life cycle traditions, schooling, and religious life. The chapter closes with a discussion of the Spanish and Portuguese origins of the Sephardic Jews.

The rest of the book is devoted to a thorough history of the community from 1836 through World War II. Seemingly isolated from western Jewish communities, the people of Monastir, in fact, had regular contact with their enlightened coreligionists. Recurrent fires and economic disasters provided an opportunity for the community to reach westward for financial assistance. The first western schools, established by missionaries who provided necessary medical care after the fire of 1863, primarily attracted children of the wealthier Jewish families. Some years later, the Alliance Israelite Universelle, a French Jewish organization, was invited to bring its style of secular education. Western education led directly to modernization and profound change, and the effect these schools had in Monastir was paralleled throughout the Balkans.

In the first years of the twentieth century, political upheaval in the form of emerging Greek and Bulgarian nationalism tore Macedonia apart. During that tumultuous time, Monastir's Jews were faced with violence and acts of anti-Semitism. Brigandage was common and Jewish merchants, who traveled widely, were frequently kidnapped and murdered. In chapter 6, Cohen confuses these tragic occurrences with the truly anti-Semitic ritual murder libels. He documents an example of the latter that took place in 1900. The disappearance of a sixty-year-old Bulgarian man prompted accusations that the "Jews killed him to use his blood to make matzah" (p. 100). Additional blood libel incidents in the 1920s are discussed in chapter 8 (p. 155). Cohen writes that "accusations of ritual murder were not unusual in the Ottoman Empire" (p. 100). The opposite is true, however, especially in comparison with the frequency of such occurrences in Eastern European Jewish communities.

Emigration from Monastir to the United States and Chile began some years prior to World War I, with the war increasing the rate of departure. Young people were sent to America to find a more stable economic and political life. Monastirlis who settled abroad sent assistance to the destitute community at the end of the war.

A major contribution of Cohen's work is the documentation of the fate of Monastir's Jews during the Holocaust. The human tragedy of this historic community was immense; no Monastirli who was deported survived the Nazi death machine. This tragedy was compounded by the destruction of property. Synagogues were defaced and destroyed, and personal...