Intergenerational Memory and Language of the Sarajevo Sephardim

This book analyses issues of language and Jewish identity among the Sephardim in Sarajevo. The author examines how Sephardim belonging to three different generations in Sarajevo deal with the challenge of cultivating hybrid and hyphenated identities under destabilizing conditions, exploring how a group of interviewees define and describe the language they speak since Yugoslavia’s collapse. Their self-identification through language is then placed within the context of other cases of linguistic and ethnic identity formation in European minority groups. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working in several related fields and disciplines, including Slavic studies, Historical Anthropology, Jewish History and Holocaust studies, Sociolinguistics, and Memory studies.
Jonna Rock currently works for the Silent Heroes Memorial Center in Berlin, Germany. She has published book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals including Nationalities Papers and Judaica Petropolitana. This is her first monograph, based on her doctoral thesis submitted at the Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.