UCLA

This dissertation analyzes the fluid, contingent, and unstable social and cultural roles of Sephardi Jews in the twentieth century United States. Specifically, this study examines the individuals and communities of Los Angeles, California and the breadth and depth of their local, national, and global relationships. As purveyors of “Oriental” goods and entertainment, merchants in and residents of a racially fragmented metropolis, or cultural and political activists and leaders, these Jews - individually and collectively - drew on diverse strands from their palimpsestic identities to shape and manage their position in Los Angeles, the United States, and the world. Based on communal and organizational archives, personal correspondence, press, census records, oral histories, and more, a complex portrait emerges of the contested and fungible experiences of American Sephardi Jews.