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From the Central District to Pike Place Market and beyond, migrants from the Mediterranean region have made a notable, if seldom noticed, impact on Seattle's urban fabric over the past century, perhaps no group more than Sephardic Jews from the Ottoman Empire. University of Washington Prof. Devin Naar takes a look at how Seattle became home to one of the largest communities in the United States of Jews from the Muslim world. What brought them from the Mediterranean--especially towns near Istanbul in Turkey and the island of Rhodes in Greece--to the Pacific Northwest in the twentieth century? What obstacles did they encounter along the way? What opportunities did they find here? How did they interact with both Indigenous and settler societies? How has their sense of community and culture transformed over the generations?
Video Courtesy of the University of Washington's History Lecture Series titled "Seattle and the Salish Sea: Building and Belonging"