Professor of Sephardic Studies in the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, Devin Naar, was interviewed by UW Today following the launch of his new book “Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece,” published in September by Stanford University Press.
The book explores how the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Salonica’s incorporation into Greece in 1912 provoked a major upheaval that compelled the city’s Jews to reimagine their community and status as citizens of a nation-state.
“Jewish Salonica” is the first book to tell the story of this tumultuous transition through the voices and perspectives of Salonican Jews as they forged a new place for themselves in Greek society.