The Martyrdom of a Moroccan Jewish Saint

The martyrdom in 1834 of Sol Hatchuel, a Jewish girl from Tangier, traumatized the Jewish community and inspired a literary response in Morocco and beyond. This study focuses on works written in the first century after her death in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, Spanish and French that tell her story and interpret its meaning. The author places both the event and the texts that narrate it in their historical context and show how its significance changed in each language and literary setting. The texts, prose and poetic laments by North African rabbis and a romantic feuilleton from the Judeo-Spanish press, and their historical settings reveal the complex relations between Jews and Muslims in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century and the intersection between religious polemics and gender discourse.

Sharon Vance, Ph.D. (2005) in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, is an Assistant Professor of History at Northern Kentucky University. She has published articles in Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa (Indiana University Press, forthcoming) and Genesis Revista della Società Italiana della Storiche, as well as in the Encyclopaedia of Jews in the Islamic World (Brill, 2010).

"This book is highly recommended for academic collections, and for collections specializing in materials about the Jews of Arab lands."

Beth Dwoskin, Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews (2012) Vol. 2, No. 1