Sephardim in Bosnia

Sarajevo is one of the places on the top list of places I would like to visit in Europe, a city whose present and recent past I am very curious to discover. Preparing this moment, I spent a couple of hours lately reading a book by the former chief rabbi Dr. Moritz Levy, one of the many victims of the Germans in the Balkans, published first in 1911.

Illustrated with pictures presenting Jews and their costumes at the beginning of the 20 century, the book is offering a couple of information about the history of a community we didn't have too much time to know. Landing in the Balkans from Spain at the end of the 16th century, the Jews from Bosnia established mostly in Sarajevo. Silent until the 18th century, they count among them names as R' Samuel Baruch or the first European-educated doctor in Bosnia, Isak Salom. The Jewish quarter has been built in 1851 and the inhabitants adopted many of the vestments and culinary customs from the Turkish majority, although the Ottomans required them - as to the Christians - to differentiate their ways of dressing. They were mostly traders, going regularly to Belgrade to sell their products, but from the 19th century, Sarajevo turned also into an important printing centre of the "Orient". The book is documented with financial and historical documents from the archives, pictures and analysis of responsa, written in an academic style but still attracting the reader by the rich information not too much known nowadays.

Although very much aware that the Sephardim in Bosnia are rather history, I am still curious to go there to discover with my own eyes their traces. Let's make a wish.