UCLA professor will discuss book about Sephardic family history at Pitt
'I really like writing books where historical human dramas are the center of attention, and that is something I continue to pursue'
Sarah Abrevaya Stein discovered a secret. She was probing a family’s trove of letters when it happened.
Stein, the distinguished professor of history and the Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at University of California, Los Angeles, shared the detail in her book, “Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century.” Stein’s work became a National Jewish Book Award finalist and was named one of the best books of 2019 by The Economist.
Looking back on the project, Stein said the secret she uncovered wasn’t the crux of her narrative but it evidenced a tension she has come to appreciate in the six years since “Family Papers” was published.
“This was super sensitive and complex for me, ethically as a writer,” she said by phone from Los Angeles. “I was faced with the question of is this a secret that I have the right to tell or the responsibility to tell, and if I do tell it, how do I tell it in a way that is both true to the historical record and preserves empathy for the people whose lives it both affected in the past and continue to affect right now?”
“Family Papers,” which Stein will speak about on March 25 at 5:30 p.m. at the University of Pittsburgh’s Barco Law Building, relies on thousands of pieces of correspondence in sharing the saga of a formerly Salonika-based clan.
Members of the Levy family were publishers and editors who helped chart Sephardic life throughout the Ottoman Empire. Amid 20th-century war and strife, relatives spread from Greece to Israel, Brazil and India. And while the Holocaust eviscerated scores of Levys, considerable correspondence remains. Personal matters regarding marriages, divorce, familial relationships and betrayal were transcribed and sent around the world. Much of those writings are privately
held by descendants.
Given the fact that many of these documents are not housed in libraries, “sterile” archives or similar settings, researching this tale required Stein to adopt different practices. She said she traveled the globe, met with surviving members of the family and gained access to intimate letters and gatherings.
For someone who touts nine previous publications from academic presses, “Family Papers” was a new exercise in both its preparation and transmission, she explained.
“I have a lot of experience as a writer, and a scholar and a publisher, and I thought that this was a story that was a human story, and certainly a Jewish story, and shouldn’t lead with all kinds of abstract arguments or theories, but should lead with the people,” she said.
Approaching history in this fashion “showed me that I loved working in family collections,” she continued. “A lot of my work since writing that book has relied wholly or in part on family-owned materials. It also taught me that I really like writing books where historical human dramas are the center of attention, and that is something I continue to pursue.”
“Family Papers,” published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was released in November 2019.
“I had a wonderful book tour planned, with many wonderful stops, all of which had to be canceled because of the pandemic except the first three. And this was awful,” she said.
In lieu of visiting communities, meeting with interested readers and sharing a story, Stein — like many authors who published books five or six years ago — resorted to sitting in front of her computer and hopping on Zoom for talk after talk.
Still, digital delivery gave her a new appreciation of the material, she said.
“One of the things that I realized in the course of that experience is that that thirst for connection that families used to maintain through letters — which was their only tie across oceans, and distance and world conflict — we are still searching for a substitute tie that binds,” she said. “We communicate a lot, in a lot of forms of media, but I think there is always a human as well as a familial thirst for maintaining intimacy over space and time.”
Stein called the lesson “profound” and said it provided a “new empathy” for the characters she explored.
Thinking back on the timing and experience, it was a “poignant book to have published at the onset of a global pandemic,” she added. “It left me thinking deeply about what is intimacy? What is family? What is connection? How do people maintain ties over time and distance? Why do we save the things we do? Why do we choose to communicate? How much care do we pour into our communications? And these are questions that became a global concern, even as the book was freshly released, and now, I think, are still live, even though it has been available for a few years.”
Stein, 53, is looking forward to her upcoming talk. Apart from a childhood trip decades ago, she has never been to Pittsburgh.
Speaking to western Pennsylvanians is an opportunity to broaden awareness about a critical subject, she explained.
“I think that for those of us invested in Jewish culture — in the Jewish past and in the Jewish present — there is a forgotten world of modern Sephardic experiences that haven’t gained the center of our attention, whether in movies, or books of history or works of fiction. And I want people to feel fascinated by a very grand Sephardic family narrative that puts this story back in the center of our consciousness,” she said. “Additionally, I invite people at this incredibly tumultuous time for our country and our world to join me in thinking about human connection, and perseverance and tribulations for ordinary people who weathered dramas and traumas as best they could, and who maintained their loyalty to one another — not that there wasn’t family friction, there was — but maintained a sense of relationship to one another through those troubled times.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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