In his article “Christmas lights – brought to you by a Jew from the Muslim world,” published Dec. 21, 2022 in The Washington Post’s Made by History column, Devin Naar analyzes how Jews from the Ottoman Empire pioneered the Christmas-lights market a century ago — but nativism, antisemitism and Islamophobia obscured this history.
Naar is the Sephardic Studies Program Chair, Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies and Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington.