
Traders, Chanters and Mystics
The Networked Afterlives of North African Torah Scrolls
Ilana Webster-Kogen(Author)
Wesleyan University Press
Will be published approx. on 5. May 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-0-8195-0231-5 (ISBN)
Description
Interdisciplinary ethnography of Torah scrolls as ritual objects and subjects_x000D_
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For Jews all over the world, the Torah scroll is the height of holiness, framed as the carefully designed and produced word of God. Jews give great attention to the care of Torah scrolls, ensuring they are maintained and protected so that they can be used for ritually chanting the Torah portion regularly. Traders, Chanters and Mystics: The Networked Afterlives of North African Torah Scrolls is an interdisciplinary ethnography of these ritual objects (or subjects) and their role in embedding neighborly relations into Jewish life over centuries. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, the book foregrounds Torah scrolls not simply as vessels of text but as agents with social lives and affect-as subjects that act within networks of devotion, memory, and migration. In analyzing the scroll's diverse afterlives-how they are celebrated and venerated, how they are chanted from in new surroundings (primarily in France), and how they are collected by Jews and non-Jews-Webster-Kogen offers a new reading of Jewish embeddedness in North African culture and history. Scrolls's afterlives constitute patrimony and restitution, and they can be approached as musical instrument or mystical medium. Anchored in France's Sephardic-majority Jewish communities, this study emphasizes liturgical continuity, offering new insights into ritual, migration, and the entangled afterlives of sacred objects in postcolonial contexts.
_x000D_
For Jews all over the world, the Torah scroll is the height of holiness, framed as the carefully designed and produced word of God. Jews give great attention to the care of Torah scrolls, ensuring they are maintained and protected so that they can be used for ritually chanting the Torah portion regularly. Traders, Chanters and Mystics: The Networked Afterlives of North African Torah Scrolls is an interdisciplinary ethnography of these ritual objects (or subjects) and their role in embedding neighborly relations into Jewish life over centuries. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, the book foregrounds Torah scrolls not simply as vessels of text but as agents with social lives and affect-as subjects that act within networks of devotion, memory, and migration. In analyzing the scroll's diverse afterlives-how they are celebrated and venerated, how they are chanted from in new surroundings (primarily in France), and how they are collected by Jews and non-Jews-Webster-Kogen offers a new reading of Jewish embeddedness in North African culture and history. Scrolls's afterlives constitute patrimony and restitution, and they can be approached as musical instrument or mystical medium. Anchored in France's Sephardic-majority Jewish communities, this study emphasizes liturgical continuity, offering new insights into ritual, migration, and the entangled afterlives of sacred objects in postcolonial contexts.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
20 b&w photos, 3 b&w tables
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
386 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8195-0231-5 (9780819502315)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Ilana Webster-Kogen
Traders, Chanters, and Mystics
The Networked Afterlives of North African Torah Scrolls
E-Book
05/2026
Wesleyan University Press
€21.49
Available for download
Person
ILANA WEBSTER-KOGEN is the Joe Loss Reader in Jewish Music at SOAS, University of London, where she is Head of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. Her first book, Citizen Azmari: Making Ethiopian Music in Tel Aviv, won the Society for Ethnomusicology's Jewish Music section publication prize. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Ethnomusicology Forum, Contemporary Jewry, and theJournal of African Cultural Studies.
Content
Introduction
Part 1: Mystics Chapter
1: The Anthropomorphic Lives of North African Torah Scroll
Chapter 2: On Organology, Tikkun and Baraka
Part 2: Chanters
Chapter 3: The Submerged Afterlife of Arab/Jewish Ritual Aesthetics in France
Chapter 4:Networks of Intensification in North African Cantillation
Part 3: Traders
Chapter 5: Widows, Caravans and Goatskins: a Biography of Torah Scroll Supply Chains
Chapter 6: Curated Afterlives: the Illicit Worlds of Torah Scroll Collecting and Display Epilogue: Restitution as Afterlife
Glossary
Bibliography
Part 1: Mystics Chapter
1: The Anthropomorphic Lives of North African Torah Scroll
Chapter 2: On Organology, Tikkun and Baraka
Part 2: Chanters
Chapter 3: The Submerged Afterlife of Arab/Jewish Ritual Aesthetics in France
Chapter 4:Networks of Intensification in North African Cantillation
Part 3: Traders
Chapter 5: Widows, Caravans and Goatskins: a Biography of Torah Scroll Supply Chains
Chapter 6: Curated Afterlives: the Illicit Worlds of Torah Scroll Collecting and Display Epilogue: Restitution as Afterlife
Glossary
Bibliography