This page lists selected reading routes on Jewish Izmir, Sephardi history, Ladino and the city’s heritage sites. It is a starting point rather than a full bibliography.
- Featured: Dina Danon, The Jews of Ottoman Izmir
- Publisher / year: Stanford University Press, 2020
- Recognition: National Jewish Book Award finalist (Sephardic Culture)
- Categories: Sephardic and Ottoman history
Starter reading
- Dina Danon, The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History (Stanford University Press, 2020). A modern history of the community drawn from Ladino archival material; a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture.
- Doğa Filiz Subaşı, ed., The Jewish Pearl of the Aegean: Izmir. Useful for readers interested in heritage sites and community memory.
- İzmir Sephardic Cuisine: With its Lost and Existing 100 Recipes. Compiled by six women of the community and first published in Turkish in 2004, a record of the city’s Sephardi cooking.
- Sara Pardo, works on Jewish Izmir.
- Studies on Izmir’s synagogues, cemeteries, music, women’s histories and the Ladino press.
How to read them
For first-time readers, Dina Danon’s work is a strong route into Ottoman Izmir. The edited volume The Jewish Pearl of the Aegean: Izmir suits readers interested in heritage sites. More specialised studies are best approached through a specific question, such as synagogue architecture, Ladino print culture, music, women’s histories or cemetery records.
