Research

The Sephardic Jews of Vienna:
A Jewish Minority Crossing Borders

In my doctoral research, I am dealing with one of the Habsburg Empire's smallest and most overlooked Jewish communities, the Sephardic (i.e. 'Spanish') or 'Turkish-Israelite' Jews of Vienna. It was formed by Jewish merchants, hailing from the Ottoman Empire in the early eighteenth century, themselves descendants of Jewish refugees who had been expelled from Spain by the Roman-Catholic Monarchs in 1492.

For many reasons the Sephardic community of Vienna was truly one of the most compelling minority groups of the late Habsburg Empire, a realm which is usually associated with the ambit of Ashkenazic or 'German' Jewry. Although calling Vienna their home for about two centuries, most Viennese Sephardim decided to remain loyal Ottoman subjects until the early twentieth century. Despite their strong ties with the Ottoman Empire—at least at a representative and diplomatic level—the Sephardic Jews of Vienna became deeply influenced by the prevalent discourses of their immediate environment. These discourses were especially contingent on the Haskalah (the German-Jewish enlightenment), as well as its offshoot, the Wissenschaft des Judentums, liberal ideas of progress, and later on also Zionism. In the nineteenth century, an increasing number of Sephardic immigrants from the Balkans decided to resettle in Vienna, a city which also became known as the 'Sefarad of the Danube.' The growth of the community gave rise to a peculiar metropolitan Viennese-Sephardic culture, which was characterised by the city's unique cultural and intellectual milieu, gradually turning Vienna into the centre of the Sephardic Haskalah (the Sephardic enlightenment).

Despite a growing academic interest in the Habsburg Sephardim in recent years, little research has been done in analysing the Viennese Sephardic community beyond the limits of historiography, literature, and linguistics. As this doctoral project is trying to demonstrate, especially in regard to the community’s migration history and the cultural transfer it was subjected to, the study of the Sephardic community of Vienna also offers many ground breaking insights about the construction of ethnic-religious minorities under trans-national aspects.

In regard to the trans-national, or rather trans-imperial environment, in which the Sephardic community of Vienna emerged and evolved, this study draws special attention to the printed media published by Viennese Sephardic intellectuals in the second half of the nineteenth century. The main sources of analysis are Judezmo (i.e. Judeo-Spanish or Ladino) newspapers that were published in Vienna between the 1860s and 1920s. Although published in Vienna, the local Judezmo press was not circulating only within the Viennese community. In fact, it included a much broader readership, as Viennese Judezmo newspapers were also destined for Sephardic communities far beyond the borders of the Habsburg Empire. As the newspapers themselves reveal, they were widely read in the declining Ottoman Empire and in the newly emerging nation states at the Balkans. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the Viennese Judezmo press raises interesting questions about the constitution of Sephardic identity and its formation in Vienna, across political and cultural boundaries and within a broader Jewish/Sephardic network:

What did it mean to be a Sephardic (i.e. Ottoman-Jewish) minority in the capital of the late Habsburg Empire? What were the cultural, religious, political, and linguistic effects on this community, especially when encountering their Ashkenazic co-religionists and the Austrian-German culture? What were the actual key aspects of Sephardic identity in Vienna?

In order to find answers to these questions, an interdisciplinary approach is employed by adopting theories commonly applied in disciplines like Political Sciences, Sociology, and Cultural Studies (e.g., Hybridity, Cultural Hegemony, Situational Identities, and Cultural Transfer). Such an interdisciplinary approach seems to be useful if not necessary for gaining a proper understanding of the constitution of ethnic-religious minorities within specific multi- and trans-national settings.

The core analysis of this project is proceeded in four stages. In the first, the relevant source materials, mostly Viennese Sephardic periodicals, are gathered and copied in several archives in Israel and Austria. They include newspapers such as La Guerta de Istoria, El Nasional, El Koreo de Viena and its supplements, El Progreso, El Mundo Sefaradi, and Mitteilungen der türkisch-israelitischen Gemeinde. In the second stage, the materials are reviewed and selected for further analysis. In the third one, the selected source materials are transcribed from Rashi script (a modified Hebrew typeface, usually employed for displaying Judezmo in print) into the Latin alphabet. Such a systematic transcription of these texts facilitates not only the analysis of these texts but also makes them accessible to a readership that is unable to read the original sources in Hebrew or Rashi script. Finally, the narrative content and the composition of the selected and transcribed texts are examined by implementing a combination of content and discourse analysis. Of course, both the merits and limitations of these methodological tools are going to be discussed at the outset of the actual analysis.

The findings of this study will not only significantly contribute to the scholarship of Austrian and Habsburg Jewry but also to the Sephardic Studies and, of course, the Study of Religions, especially in regard to the constitution of ethnic-religious identities within specific trans-national networks. In this regard, this study will also be an important contribution to the Migration, Diaspora, and Minority Studies in Austria, as well as in Europe.

My doctoral research is carried out in the framework of a Co-Tutelle de Thèse (Joint Study Programme) between the University of Vienna (Department of Religious Studies) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (European Forum). It is supervised by Professor Wolfram Reiss (University of Vienna), Professor David Bunis (Hebrew University) and Dr. Michael Silber (Hebrew University). The project is generously funded by the DOC Fellowship Programme of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.