Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to the many Egyptian Jews in Egypt, Israel, Paris, and San Francisco who shared their memories, papers, and hearts with me in the course of my research for this book. Without their assistance, this book would have been an entirely different and inferior product. Their names are listed in the Bibliography.

Many Egyptian Jews as well as other friends and colleagues saved clippings from the Israeli and Egyptian press for me, allowed me to copy personal papers, or gave me books, magazines, and other materials that were invaluable sources for this book. Among them were Raymond Aghion, Ada Aharoni, Shlomo Barad, Esther and Gilbert Bar-On, Henriette Busnach, Yusuf Darwish, Marcelle Fisher, Karim al-Gawhary, Yitzhaq Gormezano-Goren, David Harel, Anda Harel-Dagan, Jacques Hassoun, Reuven Kaminer, Mourad El-Kodsi, Yoram Meital, Doris and Henry Mourad, Remy and Joe Pessah, Sami Shemtov, Ted Swedenburg, and Robert Vitalis. Ninette Braunstein and Gabi Rosenbaum suggested the names of people I should speak with. Roger Kohn, curator of the Judaica collection at the Stanford University Library, was always willing and often successful in acquiring materials I needed. He kept my research interests in mind during the course of this project and passed on to me several items I might otherwise have missed.

Saba Mahmood, Remy Pessah, Aron Rodrigue, Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Robert Vitalis, and Jane Zimmerman graciously read and commented on portions of the typescript and made many valuable suggestions. Zachary Lockman and Nancy Reynolds each painstakingly read a late draft of the book and offered incisive, detailed critiques. I have not been able to respond adequately to all of their points, but the text has, nonetheless, been significantly improved because of the attention they lavished on it. Much of my thinking and development as a scholar is inextricably bound up with my long friendship and collaboration with Zachary Lockman. It is an enormous source of satisfaction and pleasure to be able to benefit from the intellectual acumen of Nancy Reynolds, the first doctoral student in Middle East history at Stanford University in many decades.

This project was conceived and came to fruition during the period of my association with Stanford University's Program in Modern Thought and Literature, an interdisciplinary doctoral program in cultural studies. Teaching the first-year graduate students the required course in “The Modern Tradition” has been a welcome challenge that provided me the opportunity to think systematically about many issues I might otherwise have avoided. My colleagues in Modern Thought and Literature and in the faculty seminar in cultural studies that met for several years in the 1980s and early 1990s have influenced my thinking in ways too numerous and subtle to catalog. The interdisciplinary Seminar in Empires and Cultures sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center, which Richard Roberts and I co-convened for three years, has also been a source of stimulating discussion of the ideas that have shaped my approach to this book. I also wish to acknowledge my debt to Stanford's Department of History. In addition to providing supplementary financial support for this project at critical points along the way, the department has long fostered an atmosphere that has allowed me to take many intellectual risks without a second thought. This is as it should be but is, unfortunately, all too rare.

Research for this project was funded by a Fulbright Research Grant in 1992–93 and a Social Science Research Council Advanced Research Grant in 1994. The Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University hosted me when I was a Fulbright grantee during 1992–93.

As always, my wife, Miriam, and son, Jamie, have been supportive and tolerant of my physical and emotional absence for extended periods during my work on this book. My debt to them can never adequately be redeemed.