Podcast Summary: New Books Network
Episode: Noam Sienna, "Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds" (Indiana UP, 2025)
Date: January 12, 2026
Host: Jalim Gutfah
Guest: Noam Sienna
Episode Overview
This episode features a lively conversation with Noam Sienna about his award-winning book, Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds. Sienna and host Jalim Gutfah delve into the deep social, material, and emotional histories of Jewish books and book culture across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia—from the aftermath of the Iberian expulsions through the onset of modernity. They discuss the methods and challenges of tracing the life of books as objects, their creators, and the evolving communities around them.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
Personal and Scholarly Origins
- Family Influence: Sienna opens by situating his intellectual journey in his family's multigenerational bookishness: printers, calligraphers, book binders, teachers, and a rabbi mother instilled an early appreciation for both the material and intellectual facets of books (02:22–05:25).
- Bridging Fields: His academic path combined Jewish history and book history, leading him to study Jewish books not just as texts but as social and material objects (05:25–06:04).
Methodology: Integrating Book History and Sephardic Studies
- Object-focused Approach: Sienna brings book history methodologies—attention to materiality, networks, production, distribution, and reader interaction—into Jewish and especially Sephardic studies, noting a significant gap in attention to books as objects in these fields (06:04–11:41).
- Breaking the Mold: He highlights the North African Jewish experience as uniquely dynamic, not fitting neat European, Christian, or Islamic models. Despite minimal local printing, North African Jews engaged creatively with manuscript and print cultures, importing books, copying printed books by hand, and circulating printed material widely (08:43–11:41).
Geography & Transnational Networks
- Scope and Movement: The study centers on Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, following networks that extend to Livorno, Amsterdam, Ottoman Palestine, and beyond. North African Jews maintained connections with both local communities and far-flung Sephardi diasporas, particularly through book trade and printing (12:59–18:18).
- Changing Networks: Sienna explores how early modern pan-Sephardic networks narrowed into more locally focused spheres in the 19th century due to colonialism and other social changes, even as individuals became more connected to global Jewish currents, especially the Ashkenazi world (18:18–25:43).
- Example: Differences between two Fez-based libraries, a family library from the 18th century with mostly locally relevant books versus a 19th-century library containing Hebrew scientific and historical works from Vilna, Berlin, and Warsaw, illustrate these shifting horizons (24:40–25:40).
Libraries, Archives, and the Afterlife of Books
- Family and Communal Libraries: Most libraries were private or semi-public collections maintained by elite men, serving as reference resources for scholars but rarely functioning as public or communal libraries as we know them today (27:58–32:47).
- Loss and Dispersion: The transition from North Africa to Israel and Europe led to the scattering and partial loss of these collections—books that once belonged together were separated, often without records of their original context (35:10–38:18).
- Example: The Serfati family library in Fez, which after waves of migration ended up divided among relatives, donated to Bar Ilan University, deaccessioned, and now scattered across second-hand markets (38:16–39:55).
- Archival Challenges: Cataloging North African Jewish materials is hampered by language barriers (e.g., Judeo Arabic), lack of standardized descriptions, and fragmented collections. Sienna notes how much remains undiscovered in under-described archives and the crucial work ahead for future scholars (42:38–46:19).
Language, Loss, and Modernization
- Language Shifts: As Judeo Arabic fell out of use, the value of manuscripts in that language dwindled within families, accelerating the loss or neglect of these items (46:18–47:37).
The Wide World of Book Production
- Unsung Labor: Sienna emphasizes the invisible labor of scribes, correctors, bookmakers, and even teenage copyists involved in creation, editing, and circulation. His example of Moshe Edrehi—whose ability to read Moroccan Hebrew script made possible the first printing of certain works—illustrates how entire book histories rest on rare, specialized skills (47:39–50:43).
- Significance of Book Making: For many, the hands-on process of making or copying books was a key part of their intellectual development and carried spiritual and communal significance (51:23–53:41).
Emotional Value and Loss
- Memorable Moment (Quote):
- Host reads from the book about Avraham Saba, a Spanish kabbalist who buried his books under an olive tree during the 15th-century expulsion:
“For these, I mourn and wail and weep day and night ... weeping over my children and the books I abandoned, and especially those books of my own writing.” (53:44–55:44)
This illustrates the profound, generational emotional importance books held, as objects of heritage and trauma.
Looking Forward: Sienna’s Next Project
- Sienna is developing a microhistory on a 16th-century Sephardi family printing house in Istanbul, exploring their hybrid print products and the Mediterranean networks they reveal—an extension of his interest in cultural, material, and transregional intersections (55:45–59:38).
Notable Quotes
-
On Methodology:
“From book history, I really am inspired by the work of scholars who think about the book as a nexus of human relationships and social processes ... that we can see some of those movements and networks by paying close attention to the physical objects themselves: the books, the type, the paper, the bindings, the annotations, the signs of use.”
<span style="color: #666666;">— Sienna, 06:19</span> -
On Jewish Books Breaking Models:
“In Morocco or Tunisia, Jews are printing books in other places and bringing them back to North Africa … copying printed books into manuscript form. So there’s this incredible variety of interactions that really don’t, that are really unique to Jewish society.”
<span style="color: #666666;">— Sienna, 09:18</span> -
On Emotional Connection:
“For these, I mourn and wail and weep day and night ... weeping over my children and the books I abandoned, and especially those books of my own writing.”
— Avraham Saba, cited by Host, 53:44 -
On Archival Loss:
“I tried to find a library that has been preserved, even mostly intact, from an identifiable North African figure ... and the answer was no, I could not find one.”
<span style="color: #666666;">— Sienna, 36:14</span> -
On Book Labor:
“Most of the hands that [a book] passed through are really undocumented … I wish I knew more about the scribes, the artists. We know so little about the artists who decorated these manuscripts and what they were thinking.”
<span style="color: #666666;">— Sienna, 47:54</span>
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [02:22] Personal and family background—origins of Sienna’s interest
- [06:04] Methodology: merging book history and Sephardic studies
- [12:59] Geographic focus and the transnational flow of books
- [18:18] Changes in networks from early modern to modern periods
- [27:58] Libraries in North African Jewish society—communal vs. semi-public
- [35:10] The fate of family libraries; archival dispersal
- [42:38] Cataloging, Judeo Arabic, and problems with archives
- [47:39] The many hands in book production: scribes, correctors, artists
- [53:44] The emotional loss of books: Avraham Saba's story
- [55:45] Sienna’s next research project: Ottoman Jewish printing press
Overall Tone & Takeaways
The conversation is warm, intellectually adventurous, and deeply rooted in both personal experience and rigorous historical research. Both host and guest share appreciation for the physical, social, and emotional histories contained in Jewish books—and their enduring power, even as so much has been physically lost or scattered. Sienna’s work serves as both a pioneering study and a call for future scholarship, bridging disciplines and geographies while foregrounding the tangible legacy of Jewish creativity in North Africa.
End of Summary