Oriental times in the culture of remembrance of the Sephardim in Belgrade between the two world wars

Sefardi su se, nakon progona s Iberijskog poluostrva (1492), naselili u velikom broju na prostore Osmanskog carstva, a u Beograd nakon 1521. godine, pošto je grad pao pod osmansku vlast. Administrativno i političko uređenje Osmanskogcarstva omogućilo je beogradskim Sefardima, kao i drugim nemuslimanima, da vekovima žive pobožno i patrijarhalno u zasebnoj mahali. Oni su bili tesno povezani rodbinski i poslovno s drugim sefardskim zajednicama širom Carstva, a samo površno s predstavnicima muslimanske vlasti i pripadnicima drugih versko-etničkih grupa koje su živele u njihovom neposrednom susedstvu. Promene su nastale tek u XIX veku, nakon uspostavljanja srpske nacionalne države, kada je započela sve intenzivnija modernizacija beogradske jevrejske zajednice. U ovom članku razmatra se kako su orijentalno doba i njegove tekovine ostali zabeleženi u tekstovima koji govore o prošlosti beogradskih Sefarda. Korpus čine sačuvane jevrejske publikacije koje su izlazile između dva svetska rata na srpskom jeziku. One svedoče o specifičnosti sećanja beogradskih Sefarda, ali i o sličnostima koje ona pokazuju kako s diskursima balkanskih suseda, tako i modernih jevrejskih autora.After being exiled from the Iberian Peninsula (1492), large numbers of Sephardic Jews settled in the territories under Ottoman rule, and in Belgrade after 1521, when it was conquered by the Ottomans. The administrative and political system of the Ottoman Empire made it possible for the Belgrade Sephardim, as well as for other non-Muslims, to live piously and patriarchally in a separate city quarter (mahala) for centuries. They were tightly connected by family and business ties with other Sephardic communities all around the Empire, and only superficially to the members of the other ethnic-confessional groups living in their immediate surroundings. The changes occurred only in the 19th century after the modern Serbian nation-state was established, and the Belgrade Jewish community entered the process of intensive modernization. In this article, we analysed how oriental times and the Ottoman heritage were remembered in the texts describing the past of Belgrade Jews. The corpus consists of Jewish publications which appeared in the Serbian language between the two World Wars. They testify to the specificity of the Jewish communicative and cultural memory which praises the position of the Jews under the Ottomans and the traditional way of life in piety and according to the patriarchal rules, but they also bear a resemblance to the discourses of the European and the Balkan orientalism, as well as of the modern Jewish authors.U: Mandić, Marija, Đorđević Crnobrnja, Jadranka (ur.) "Temat: Islam, pojedinac i zajednice prakse u Beogradu nekad i sad"