Sarah Levin

Job title: 
Lecturer, Jewish Studies
Bio/CV: 

Sarah Levin is a Lecturer in Jewish Studies. Levin’s research interests focus on Jewish communities of North Africa and the Middle East and Jewish-Muslim relations, particularly in cultural encounters and exchanges. Levin received her PhD in Jewish Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Folklore from UC Berkeley in 2017. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Poetic Dueling, Storytelling, and Joking: Moroccan Atlas Mountain Jews and Muslims Remember Each Other. This project examines 20th-century Jewish-Muslim relations through 21st-century memories (recorded from Muslims and Jews) of Amazigh (Berber) oral traditions. These traditions, once integral to their daily lives, offer a unique framework for addressing boundaries and difference, while simultaneously elucidating the shared cultural experiences of Jews and Muslims.

Levin has been a recipient of Fulbright and Posen fellowships, and in Spring 2019 was a Fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (University of Pennsylvania), where the year’s theme was “Jewish Life in Modern Islamic Contexts.”

Her publications include “The Aḥwash: Jewish and Muslim Articulations of a Shared Amazigh (Berber) Cultural Tradition in Morocco and Its Diaspora,” in Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds, 2021, and “Wit, Ruse, Rivalry, and Other Keys to Coexistence: Reflections of Jewish-Muslim Relations in Berber Oral Traditions,” in North African Mosaic: A Cultural Reappraisal of Ethnic and Religious Minorities, 2007.

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