Named one of the best books of 2019 by The Economist and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. A National Jewish Book Award finalist.
"A superb and touching book about the frailty of ties that hold together places and people." —The New York Times Book Review
An award-winning historian shares the true story of a frayed and diasporic Sephardic Jewish family preserved in thousands of letters
For centuries, the bustling port city of Salonica was home to the sprawling Levy family. As leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. The wars of the twentieth century, however, redrew the borders around them, in the process transforming the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree.
In Family Papers, the prizewinning Sephardic historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein uses the family's correspondence to tell the story of their journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe. They wrote to share grief and to reveal secrets, to propose marriage and to plan for divorce, to maintain connection. They wrote because they were family. And years after they frayed, Stein discovers, what remains solid is the fragile tissue that once held them together: neither blood nor belief, but papers.
With meticulous research and care, Stein uses the Levys' letters to tell not only their history, but the history of Sephardic Jews in the twentieth century.
- Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
- Jewish American Heritage Month
- A Family Affair: Bridgerton Read Alikes
- Long Weekend, Short Reads
- Mental Health Awareness
- Our Librarians Love Steampunk!
- Blake Crouch: Dark Matter and More
- She doesn't even go here!: For fans of Mean Girls
- April Showers Bring May Flowers
- Not Just Another Teen Book- YA for Adults
- Retro Reads - Books from the 1900s
- New eBook additions
- Page to Screen
- See all
- Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
- Jewish American Heritage Month
- Mental Health Awareness
- Long Weekend, Short Reads
- A Family Affair: Bridgerton Read Alikes
- Our Librarians Love Steampunk!
- She doesn't even go here!: For fans of Mean Girls
- Page to Screen
- Not Just Another Teen Book- YA for Adults
- Retro Reads - Books from the 1900s
- New audiobook additions
- Now Available! Popular Audiobooks You May Have Missed
- Best Books of 2023
- See all
- #ownvoices / Diverse Books
- Antiracism Resources
- Sheet Music & Song Books
- Bücher auf Deutsch / Books in German
- Civil Service Test Prep
- The Great Courses
- QuickReads Collection
- See all