Jewish Studies 231 - "Arab Jews": Reorienting Jewish History

In 1939 there were approximately a million Jews living across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from Morocco to Iran. Today, most countries in the MENA region have Jewish populations ranging from the single digits to a couple thousand. This course explores why this dissolution of MENA Jewish communities happened and proposes that the history of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in the modern period can be a point of departure for students interested in investigating other major areas of study: Jewish studies, Middle East studies, and Israel/Palestine studies.