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:

Sarah M. Zaides, "Tevye's Ottoman Daughter: Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews at the End of Empire" (Libra Kitap, 2022)

February 24, 2023

Tevye's Ottoman Daughter

Sarah M. Zaides

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…

Mir Yarfitz, "Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina" (Rutgers UP, 2019)

January 28, 2022

Impure Migration

Mir Yarfitz

Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina (Rutgers UP, 2019) investigates the period from the 1890s until the 1930s, when prostitut…

Sina Kahen, "Ideas: Bereshit" (2020)

July 1, 2021

Ideas

Sina Kahen

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 …

Devi Mays, "Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora" (Stanford UP, 2020)

May 26, 2021

Forging Ties, Forging Passports

Devi Mays

Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora (Stanford University Press, 2020) is a history of migration and nation-bui…

Cedric Cohen-Skalli, "Don Isaac Abravanel: An Intellectual Biography" (Brandeis UP, 2020)

April 9, 2021

Don Issac Abravanel

Cedric Cohen-Skalli

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) was an important forerunner of Jewish modernity. A merchant, banker, and court financier; a scholar versed in both Jew…

Dina Danon, "The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History" (Stanford UP, 2020)

February 18, 2021

The Jews of Ottoman Izmir

Dina Danon

Across Europe, Jews were often confronted with the notion that their religious and cultural distinctiveness was somehow incompatible with the modern a…