Housed in the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, the Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies offers students at the undergraduate and graduate level the rare opportunity to focus intensively on the study of Sephardic history and culture. It also hosts lectures, workshops and symposia open to the academic and wider Los Angeles community that cultivate and stimulate this field and situate UCLA as one of its principle hubs. It has supported international scholarship, building on the solid research and teaching program erected over the course of a decade and a half of Maurice Amado Lectures and more recently by the Maurice Amado Chair.
The UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies is pleased to announce that Aomar Boum has been appointed as the new Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies. Boum has interdisciplinary training in anthropology, history, and Middle Eastern and North African studies. His research, both past and ongoing, reflects an expansive vision of Sephardic studies that aligns with the breadth of focus associated with the Maurice Amado Chair. He has authored or co-authored five books, among many other works, and has a forthcoming book project provisionally entitled “Moroccan Frames, Jewish Portraits: Diasporic Histories from Los Angeles.” His body of work includes localized ethnographic publications on Jewish- Muslim relations in Morocco; efforts to situate Jews and Muslims in relation to other ethnic and religious groups in the Maghrib and the Middle East; research related to the Holocaust and North Africa; and, more recently, work on Moroccan Jewishness as a global phenomenon.
At the Alan D. Leve Center, Boum has led efforts to build partnerships with the Moroccan Jewish community here in Los Angeles and in Morocco, and helped to secure our campus as a destination for scholars and students invested in the histories, cultures, languages, and literatures of Maghribi Jewries.
We congratulate Professor Boum and extend our deepest gratitude to the Maurice Amado Foundation for their enduring support and generosity. Since 1989, Sephardic Studies has developed into an ambitious and intellectually exciting academic focal point on campus, due in great part to our sustained partnership with the Maurice Amado Foundation. As we consider the future of the program under Aomar Boum’s tutelage, we look forward to continuing our collaborative work.
UCLA has supported programming in Sephardic Studies since receiving an endowment from the Maurice Amado Foundation in 1989. Initially UCLA hosted a series of distinguished and diverse scholars to serve as Visiting Maurice Amado Professors for one quarter each year. Among the visitors were Professors Yom-Tov Assis, Jonathan Israel, David Gilitz, Moshe Idel, Moshe Lazar, Edward Seroussi, Jonathan Ray and Shalom Sabar.
Meet Aomar Boum, UCLA’s new Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies
As a professor of anthropology and of Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA, Boum takes a global perspective on the history of Jews from Morocco, including those who settled in Los Angeles, New York or Montreal, while also examining the larger context of minorities in the Middle East and North Africa. (photo: Joel Mason-Gaines/USHMM)
Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies