Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

Selahattin Ülkümen(1914–2003) was born in the city of İskenderun (Alexandretta) in 1914. During World War II, while serving as Turkey’s consul-general on the Greek island of Rhodes, he saved many members of the island’s Jewish community after the Germans took over the occupation from the Italians. On  July 19, 1944, the German commanding officer, General Ulrich Kleemann, ordered the Jewish population of the island rounded up, to be shipped to extermination camps. Ülkümen, at great personal risk, intervened on behalf of the Jews, demanding the immediate release of those who were Turkis…

Sara Ungar (1849–1911), an educator of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) school network, had the unusual distinction of being born in Bonn, Germany, whereas many of her colleagues hailed from France. She attended the Institut Bischoffsheim, one of the AIU teacher-training schools for women in Paris, where she earned the diploma of brevet supérieur (teaching certification granted after four years at a normal school). In 1882, she founded the AIU School for Girls in Tunis and continued as its principal through 1887. In this capacity she emphasized the teachi…

The first Jews to settle in the British Isles were Ashkenazim from northern France who came in the wake of the Norman conquest of 1066. They were joined by a smaller number from Germany, Spain, and Italy. By the twelfth century, Jews lived in most of the biggest English cities, with the largest community in London. The prosperity and security of English Jewry declined steadily with the accession of Richard the Lionhearted (r. 1189–1199) and the violence attending the Third Crusade. The anti-Jewish legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215…

The early Jewish communities in North America were all established by Sephardi Jews of the Western Sephardi tradition. The first congregation in North America, Shearith Israel, also now known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, was founded in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1654. Four other congregations in what became the United States, all Sephardi, antedated the American Revolution—in Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah. Almost all the Jewish immigration to the United States through the nineteenth century was composed of Jews of European background.Early in the tw…