The Levites Annual Lecture 2025
鈥淎mateur Films and Sephardi Joy: A Global Spin鈥�
with Sarah Abrevaya Stein (UCLA)
Presented by the Department of Jewish Studies
RSVP required:聽
This talk explores family photographs and amateur films of Sephardi communities as a springboard from which to dive deeply into the everyday lives of southeastern European Jewish children, women, and men before the Holocaust. Scattered in private hands and a few archives around the world, family films capture Sephardi Jews living before their near-total extermination鈥攁nd offer a moving and intimate glimpse of a lost milieu. In this presentation, Stein thinks about amateur film and photography as sites of interaction, shaped by intimate relationships between photographer and subject, which offer a unique 鈥渁rchive of joy鈥� for the Sephardi world. Our site of entry is Ottoman Monastir [current day Bitola in the Republic of North Macedonia], a city that has been Ottoman, Serbian, Bulgarian, Yugoslavian, German, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and North Macedonian over the last 120 years.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein聽is Distinguished Professor of History and Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. She is the author or editor of ten books, including, most recently,聽Wartime North Africa: a Documentary History, 1934-1950聽(Stanford University Press, co-authored with Aomar Boum, granted the Best Historical Materials award by the American Library Association (2023) and AJL Judaica Reference Award by the Association for Jewish Libraries (2023), and聽Family Papers, a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century聽(Farrar, Straus, & Giroux 2019), named a Best Book of 2019 by The Economist and an Editor鈥檚 Choice Book by the New York Times Book Review. She is recipient of the 2025 Salo W. and Jeanette M. Senior Scholar Award for Scholarly Excellence in Research on the Jewish Experience from the University of Vienna, the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and multiple National Jewish Book Awards, Stein lives and surfs in Santa Monica, CA.