Introduction

Jewish History (2014) 28: 249259 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 DOI: 10.1007/s10835-014-9218-x

Introduction

ANTHONY MOLHO

European University Institute, Florence, Italy Brown University, Providence, RI, USA E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract This issue of Jewish History presents articles that are the result of a June 2012 meeting on the history of Salonicas Jews organized by the Group for the Study of the History of the Jews of Greece (created in 2005). In its seminars and workshops, the group tried to distance discussions of the history of Salonicas Jews from the often narrow national(ist) perspectives that Greek, Jewish, and Turkish historiographies traditionally applied to the study of Salonica and of its Jewish population. In the wake of the initiatives undertaken by a similar group founded in the early 1990s, and of the publication of Mark Mazowers Salonica, City of Ghosts, the group sought to bring to the fore the history of Salonicas Jews; compare it, when possible, to histories of the Jews of the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean, and other port cities; and consider it in contexts created by analytical terms such as tradition, modernity, migration, diaspora, identity, hybridity, and dissent. The aim was manifold: to acknowledge the role of Salonicas large Jewish population in the citys history; to insert the Jewish element in ongoing city affairs that also involved other groups; to transcend the identity politics with which Salonicas historiography had been colored; to challenge monolithic views of Salonicas Jewry; to insist on the variety and resulting tensions that characterized the citys Jewish population; and to historicize staple interpretations of Salonicas and Jewish Salonicas history.

Keywords Salonica Jews Modern Greece Ottoman Empire Turkey Jewish

historiography

Ten years after the publication of Mark Mazowers justly acclaimed Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 14301950 and its subsequent translation into Greek, Italian, Turkish, Hebrew, and other languages, Jewish History is devoting an issue to one of the three ethnic and religious groups whose histories, over more than half a millennium, were woven into this grand narrative of Salonicas history.1 Thanks primarily to Mazower, over the last decade the landscape of Salonicas historiography has changed considerably.2 In the pages that follow, several contributors touch upon some of

1Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews,...