What Happened | Magda Teter
In our December 5 issue, Magda Teter reviews a new book ostensibly about the last decades of the Regency of Algiers and “the ties between the land and the sea and between the sea and the history of events, money, and power.” But behind that history, Teter writes, is “a story of the perception of Mediterranean Jewish traders by European and American actors, who projected their sense of superiority over and disdain for both Jews and Muslims.” Teter scrutinizes what more conventional histories take for granted, pointing out, for example, how “speeches the consuls claim to have delivered are taken at face value, without considering that they might be, as Natalie Zemon Davis put it, ‘fiction in the archives.’” This particular care with archives and interpretation is the mark of Teter’s career as a historian. At Fordham, where she is the chair of Judaic studies, she concentrates on premodern relations between Jewish and Christian peoples and how that lineage informs the present. Her books include Blood Libel: On the Trail of Antisemitism, which won the 2020 National …
