Event

The Ottoman Production of Ashkenazi Identity

Date
2 Dec 2025
Time
14:15 UK time
Speakers
Dr Yair Wallach
Where
St Anne's College, Seminar room 5, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Series
Israel Studies Seminar
Organiser contact
Audience
Members of the University only
Booking
Required
The grouping of Yiddish speaking Jews, of various origin countries in Central and Eastern Europe, into a single overarching identity of Ashkenazim, was meaningful particularly in multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Jewish contexts. This seminar examines the shaping of the Ashkenazi community in Ottoman Jerusalem, as facilitated by Ottoman legal and political context. Ottoman recognition of Ashkenazim as a corporate identity was crucial to its emergence and continuity.

Dr Yair Wallach is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Israeli Studies, and the head of the SOAS Centre for Jewish Studies. He has written on urban and material culture in modern Palestine/Israel, and more recently on race and migration. His book A City in Fragments: Urban Text in Modern Jerusalem (Stanford University Press, 2020) won the Jordan Schnitzer book prize in 2022.