Press Room
The Center for Jewish History will host a conversation with Dr. Joseph Sassoon, author of the new book, The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (Pantheon Books) on Thursday, October 20.
Dr. Sassoon, a professor at Georgetown University and the Director of Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, explores his riveting family history in a program that will stream live at 6pm. The gilded Jewish Baghdadi Sassoons built a vast empire through global finance and trade that established them as one of the wealthiest dynasties in the world for two hundred years, merging East and West.
According to Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History, “With his fluency in Arabic, Hebrew, and the Baghdadi Jewish dialect also known as Judeo-Arabic, Dr. Joseph Sassoon is one of the few who could tell the story of his illustrious family, whose secrets lay untapped in the family’s archives at the National Library of Israel. As a direct descendant of Baghdadi Sheik Sassoon ben Saleh Sassoon (1750-1830), he is also able to impart a unique perspective on this multigenerational history.”