Private Passions by Rochelle Alers

Private Passions by Rochelle Alers

Providing an unparalleled overview of Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewish communities in world history, this authoritative, stimulating work, superbly edited and clearly written, also suggests new approaches to assessing their cultural practices and relation to the wider societies of which they formed, and in many cases continue to form, a part. --Dale F. Eickelman, Dartmouth College

Historians, anthropologists, and linguists from Israel, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States provide a comprehensive picture of Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries in modern times. The volume touches on such themes as the impact of modernization upon Sephardi communities in North Africa, the Balkans, and other areas of the Ottoman Empire; responses to cultural change in Sephardi communities of Iraq and North Africa; issues relating to contemporary Jewish languages and literatures; and conceptions of ethnicity and gender in Sephardi communities.

Contributors include Joelle Bahloul, Jacob Barnai, Esther Benbassa, Yoram Bilu, David M. Bunis, Joseph Chetrit, Harvey E. Goldberg, Isaac Guershon, Andr Levy, Laurence D. Loeb, Susan Gilson Miller, Amnon Netzer, Aron Rodrigue, Esther Schely-Newman, Daniel J. Schroeter, Norman A. Stillman, Yosef Tobi, Yaron Tsur, Zvi Yehuda, and Zvi Zohar.

Rochelle Alers is a best-selling novelist with approximately two million copies of her books in print. She has also won numerous honors, including the Gold Pen Award, the Emma Award, the Vivian Stephens Award for Excellence in Romance Writing, the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, and the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Award, among others. Carolyn Brown is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling romance author who has sold over 3 million books and is a RITA(R) Finalist. She now writes women's fiction as well as cowboy romance. She's authored historical single titles, historical series, contemporary single titles, and contemporary series, among other genres.

Her husband, a former English teacher, lives in southern Oklahoma with her and is not allowed to read her works until they are published. They have three children and a plethora of grandchildren to keep them entertained. Visit CarolynLBrown.com or follow her on Facebook/CarolynBrownBooks for a complete list of her novels (in order of publication) and to sign up for her newsletter.