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  • Memories, Identities, Histories
  • Robert Bonfil
K. E. Fleming. Greece: A Jewish History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xii + 271.
Annette B. Fromm. We Are Few: Folklore and Ethnic Identity of the Jewish Community of Ioannina, Greece. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008. Pp. xx + 199.

A historian reviewing a work of history calls to mind the actions of an inquisitorial judge, a judge whose raison d'être is not the prosecution of a particular person but rather, at least on the surface, a finding of truth. Readers accustomed to the juridical terminology rooted in Roman or canon law well know that this is the general meaning of the term inquisition in inquisitorial systems of law—in which investigations can be set up by the judge, as defender of the public good, even in absence of formal plaintiff—arbitrio judicis.1 As a particular case of the "ambiguous contiguities between judges and historians," pointed out by Carlo Ginzburg in an essay rich with momentous insights,2 it merges with two further ambiguous characteristics of "the historian's craft," pointed out independently by two talented authors. First, the complex structural link stressed by Michel de Certeau between the historian's practice and the social and cultural background of the texts produced here and now about then and there—the relation in the historian's practice "between a place (a recruitment, a milieu, a profession etc.), analytical procedures (a discipline), and the construction of a text;"3 and second, the analogous complex relation [End Page 744] between the inquisitorial judge's practice and its alleged aim, which assumes axiomatically that pursuing the public good (as conceived by the judge) is in perfect harmony with the search for truth.4

Since, however, both the author and the reviewer are affected by the same impulses that, according to de Certeau, are built into the historian's work, responsible reviewers must steel themselves to an awareness that connecting the writing of history to a search for truth in the service of the public good can turn out to be deeply problematic, especially when it is viewed from a standpoint which is not precisely the same as, or even diametrically opposite to, that of the author. Reviewers are like judges, who must ask themselves whether they are indeed professionally equipped to deal with the case on they are about to pronounce a verdict, or whether their efforts to uncover the real meaning of the evidence can block out extraneous perspectives. Readers are certainly justified to wonder how is it that the present writer dares to engage here in such a hazardous undertaking, given his seemingly loose connection to the subject at hand. A word of explanation may therefore be appropriate.

Professional curiosity, prodded by the exciting experience of being part of a research team on Byzantine Jewry at the Scholion Center for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joined up with an intense emotional drive to delve into my family roots and life story. My maternal grandfather, Israel David, came from Ioannina. My maternal grandmother, Rosa, was from Volos, where she also gave birth to my mother, Allegra, known as Bijou. My father, David Bonfil, came to Greece from Paris, where he moved from his hometown of Istanbul as a student; after some time he settled with his new wife in Karditsa (Thessaly), where he ran a private French school. There I was born. I will not abuse the patience of the readers by giving a detailed account of the physical displacements I underwent in my life, from Greece to Italy (where I spent almost twenty thrilling years), to Israel where I entered the historical profession at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and where I wrote this review, between 10 Tevet and January 27, 2009, in a local context of violent ethnic confrontation linked to vitriolic demonstrations throughout the world. This review, I hope, will serve not only to satisfy my own highly charged personal interest in studies of times and [End Page 745] places related to my life story but also to alert perceptive readers that the standpoint from which my curiosity issues is quite different from that of the authors, who...

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