Watch the official launch and celebration for Jewish Salonica, Professor Devin E. Naar’s first book. In his November 3, 2016 presentation, author Devin E. Naar, the Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington, shared stories about how he located and accessed the trove of previously undiscovered materials that informed his groundbreaking research.

Dr. Naar won two 2016 National Jewish Book Awards for this book, Jewish Salonica: Between the Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford University Press). The annual book awards, selected by the Jewish Book Council, span the full range of genres, from poetry and children’s literature to memoir and biography, Holocaust Studies, Jewish Education, and scholarship in several fields. The full list of awards for 2017 is available here.

Dr. Naar is chair of the Sephardic Studies Program at UW as well as faculty for the History Department and the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. He published Jewish Salonica after years of archival research around the globe. It is therefore fitting that he won the JDC-Herbert Katzki Award for Writing Based on Archival Material. Dr. Naar was also named a finalist in the category of Sephardic Culture; the winner in that category, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, is a former faculty member for UW Jewish Studies and History.

The Stroum Center congratulates Dr. Naar on these recognitions of his outstanding work.