Sarah Zaides Rosen

Project Description

Lecturer, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

Ph.D., History, University of Washington

Faculty profile

Sarah Zaides Rosen is a historian working in the fields of Russian, Soviet, and late Ottoman history, as well as Jewish studies. Her first book, Tevye’s Ottoman Daughter: Ashkenazi and Soviet Jews at the End of Empire, was published by Libra Books in 2022, and follows the stories of Russian Jews who, on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, took a path of exit to Istanbul and small agricultural colonies in the Western Aegean. There, the book follows the sagas of these Ashkenazi Jews as they encountered a Sephardic majority and considered, and late reconsidered, the possibilities open to them, including eventual migration to Palestine, Western Europe, North America, and Argentina.

Dr. Zaides teaches courses in Jewish studies and in history, including the history of Jewish-Muslim relations, and is also the director of the graduate fellowship program, for which she teaches its required course. From 2017-2023, Dr. Zaides served as the associate director of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. Her research has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Joff Hanauer Fellowship, and the Titus Ellison Fellowship. Dr. Zaides is also a member of the board of directors of the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle, Washington.

Public scholarship

• Book talk: “Tevye’s Ottoman Daughter” on YouTube (2023)
• Podcast interview: “Tevye’s Ottoman Daughter: Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews at the End of Empire” – New Books Network (2023)