EVANESCENT HAPPINESS: OTTOMAN JEWS ENCOUNTER MODERNITY, THE CASE OF LEA MITRANI AND JOSEPH NIEGO (1863-1923)

Abstract

The thesis aims to be a collective biography of Joseph Niego and Lea Mitrani,

two Ottoman Jews, whose lives would span a sixty-year period of profound changes

for Ottoman Jewry.

Born in Edirne, Joseph and Lea were educated in the schools of the Alliance

Israélite Universelle. Subsequently, they were sent to Paris in order to be trained as

teachers and be sent back to help "regenerate" "Oriental" Jews through a Western-

style education. After their marriage, Joseph was appointed director of the

agricultural school "Mikveh Israel," established by the Alliance in the outskirts of

Jaffa, where the family would spend twelve years.

Their time in an agricultural school and contact with Zionism and the Jewish

pioneers in late nineteenth-century Palestine would define their lives as a married

couple and as Jews in the vortex of modernization and nationalisms. While Joseph

would thrive professionally, Lea would gradually lose control of her life.