The Mediterranean culture of fishing: Continuity and change in the world of Jewish fishermen,1500–1929

Abstract

This essay discusses the maritime Jews and their changing role in the fishing occupation in the Mediterranean sea. The first part presents the trends in historiography regarding the Thessalonikian Jewish fishermen in Ottoman and Post Ottoman periods. The second section explores the maritime world of Jewish fishermen in Ottoman Thessaloniki between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. We will establish the cultural identity of the Jewish fishermen, which expressed itself in Thermaikos Bay. The third part depicts the reasons for the collapse of the Jewish sea tenure in Greek Thessaloniki, especially between the years 1922-1924, and continues to describe one of the responses; the settlement of several fishing families in Acre (in Mandatory Palestine). Their experience in the new environment was short (1925-1929) and we will investigate the linkage between their cultural marginality in the core society to the failure of forming a Jewish maritime community in Acre.