Rethinking Citizenship: Female Sephardic Orphans in the Modern Mediterranean

• In Event: Jewish Youth and Social Change: From Colonial Expansion to Modern Multiculturalism

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, orphans became part of a larger debate about the dangers of unchecked social ills, and the role of the state and local religious communities in their repair. Female orphans in particular could powerfully symbolize the possible risks to society—and to the orphan—in the absence of needed guardianship. As one dying mother explained to her soon-to-be orphaned daughter in a dramatic 1923 novel printed in Istanbul, “many young men will gaze at your beauty,” but then warned, “don’t let them deceive you…Protect yourself from them!” (Elia Karmona, La guerfanika desmamparadah). In this paper, I examine the role of female Sephardic orphans within the changing geopolitical climate of the interwar Mediterranean littoral. Drawing in part on the work of Minna Rozen, Will Hanley, and Nazan Maksudyan, I argue that female Sephardi orphans helped to articulate notions of citizenship during the interwar period, as the concept of political belonging was being reshaped. Not only were many orphans active participants in questions relating to citizenship—and at times with multiple allegiances, both foreign and local—they were also the subject of cultural productions which meditated on the important yet uncertain status of young orphaned women in society. The sources for this paper include novels, theater/plays, and memoires, as well as newspaper articles, consular records, and applications for citizenship emerging from Jerusalem, Edirne, Plovdiv, Salonika, and Istanbul. This piece is part of a larger project on Sephardic citizenship and political belonging.

Author

• Allyson Gonzalez, Yale University