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Jacob's Children in the Land of the Mahdi: Jews of the Sudan | 
 enlarge | Author: Eli S. Malka
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
Buy New: $24.23
You Save: $10.72 (31%)
New (15) Used (8) from $21.13
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1369773
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 262
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1
ISBN: 0815681224
Dewey Decimal Number: 962.4004924
EAN: 9780815681229
ASIN: 0815681224
Publication Date: April 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
"A charming recitation of the history of these Jews... told by a man whose family was at its very center. (Malka) knows all there is to know about this community. Highly readable". -- Henry L. Feingold author of Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust Jacob's Children in the Land of the Mahdi details the development of a prosperous Jewish community in the Sudan. Eli S. Malka -- one of the last living eyewitnesses to many of the events in this book -- chronicles this group's history, from its origins as an isolated group of eight Jewish families trapped in the turmoil of the Mahdi's revolt in 1881, through its period of growth to its final demise a mere eighty years later. In Part I, Malka starts his narrative with the self-proclaimed Mahdi's revolt in 1881 against British-Egyptian rule in the Sudan. During the Mahdi's thirteen-year rule all infidels, including the Jews, were forcibly converted to Islam under threat of death. Jacob's Children documents the lives of the Sephardic Jews in the Sudan through the twentieth century. Malka writes of this community's most vibrant years from the 1930s and 1940s, and insightfully describes the contacts made with the neighboring Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Eritrean Jews.This unique society began to disband during World War II, and this process was exacerbated by the Arab-Israeli conflicts that followed. As a result, almost all the Jews in the Sudan were gone by the late 1960s. The ancestry of almost all the Sudan Jews is provided herein, as well as family histories both in the Sudan and in their new homelands. Part II is an autobiography of the author describing his life in the Sudan. Wonderful descriptions ofSephardic life and culture are a bonus.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Only book on the Jews of the Sudan May 1, 1998
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
In his richly illustrated book, Eli Malka tells of the handful of intrepid Jews caught in the 13 year battle between British colonial forces and an XVIII century fundamentalist desert warlord known as the Mahdi.. Acclaimed as of great importance by several prominent Jewish historians, the book tells of their travails and growth from that small group of Jews to a large and prosperous Jewish community. It tells of their dedicated and selfless rabbi, the building of their synagogue and Jewish recreation club, of the only B'nai B'rith Lodge in the african interior, of their difficulties during the Arab-Israeli wars and finally follows them through their dispersion into the diaspora. The reader gets an excellent picture of what it was like to live as a Jew in an isolated Moslem country. Of interest to genealogists is the detailed histories of most of the Jewish families in the Sudan as well as an appendix listing all Jewish marriages that had occurred during the community's existence in the Sudan. The appendix alone makes this a must have for genealogy and Jewish history libraries.
 Excellent, vital, iteresting. December 13, 2002
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Eli S. Malka is a respectful Sudanese jew, whereever he is, who left behind good reputation and an honest authentic book. He symbolizes peaceful linving-together and co-existence in between the Sudanese elites and economical mob within an ethnically diversitified network. I did't personally met him, but in fact, many elderly consider him as an 'honest brother' and a man of social integrity. He belongs to many Sudanese families who have jewish rootes. Incidentally, my wife's name is (Malka)!Although I have only gone over an Arabic transcript of some of the book's chapters (on a Sudanese local paper) I love to get hold of the English version of the book .. It is worthhaving and worthreading!
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