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About Makena Mezistrano
Makena Mezistrano is a PhD student in History at Stanford University where she studies Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews in the modern period, specifically in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Empire. Previously she served as the Assistant Director of the Sephardic Studies Program at the University of Washington. Makena holds an MA in Biblical and Talmudic Interpretation and a BA in English literature, both from Yeshiva University. In addition to Sephardic studies she is passionate about advancing opportunities for higher learning in Talmud and Tanakh for Orthodox Jewish women. She is currently interested in the medieval biblical commentaries of Don Isaac Abravanel.NBN Episodes hosted by Makena:
December 3, 2025
The Jews of Edirne
At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Edirne was a bustling center linking Istanbul to Ottoman Europe. It was also the capital of Edirne P…
January 5, 2025
The 1840 Rhodes Blood Libel
The Rhodes blood libel of 1840, an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence, was initiated by the island’s governor in collusion with Levantine merchants, who…
February 24, 2023
Tevye's Ottoman Daughter
In existing scholarship on Jewish subjects of the Russian Empire, there were three typical fates available to Russia's Jews on the eve of the Bolshevi…
January 28, 2022
Impure Migration
Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina (Rutgers UP, 2019) investigates the period from the 1890s until the 1930s, when prostitut…
July 1, 2021
Ideas
The Torah — the Bible — is Judaism’s crown. The ideas gleaned from it have improved and advanced human civilization. In the first two installments of …
May 26, 2021
Forging Ties, Forging Passports
Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora (Stanford University Press, 2020) is a history of migration and nation-bui…
April 9, 2021
Don Issac Abravanel
Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) was an important forerunner of Jewish modernity. A merchant, banker, and court financier; a scholar versed in both Jew…
February 18, 2021
The Jews of Ottoman Izmir
Across Europe, Jews were often confronted with the notion that their religious and cultural distinctiveness was somehow incompatible with the modern a…