Based off more than twenty years of research, Like Salt for Bread. The Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Studia Judaeoslavica Volume 13) is a robust survey of the more than 500-year history of the Bosnian Jewish community. With extensive experience and personal connections in-country, Francine Friedman, Professor of Political Science at Ball State University, provides the first comprehensive study in any language of the often overlooked Jewish community in the frequently tumultuous Balkan state.
Arguing that the Jewish minority is the salt in a metaphoric “utilitarian loaf of bread” in which the flour, oil, and yeast symbolize the three majority religious ethnicities (Roman Catholic, Muslim, and Serbian Orthodox) that make up the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Friedman notes that the Jewish population has provided both unity across the fragile ethnonationalist environment and cultural flavor. Like Salt for Bread is a timely tribute to a once vibrant Jewish community now plagued by contemporary challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic, a persistent exodus from Bosnia of Jewish youth originating from the Bosnian War in the 1990s, and unresolved geopolitical tensions between BiH, Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, Israel, and the European Union.
Divided into eight chapters, the study begins with the first Jewish settlement in Iberia, turning its attention to both the pre and post histories of the fifteenth-century inquisition. Following the deadly Inquisition, Like Salt for Bread focuses on the Sephardic resettlement to the Ottoman Empire, describing the origins of the Sarajevo community along with other smaller communities, for example, in Mostar, Banja Luka, and Travnik. Notably, Friedman dedicates an entire chapter to the Bosnian Ashkenazi community, unpacking the structural development of the burgeoning Jewish population including its administration and cultural outlets from clubs to print media that circulated the entire Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in the First Yugoslavia (1918–41).
Turning to the volatile twentieth century, Friedman devotes over 100 pages to World War II, emphasizing the plight of the Jewish population under the Fascist Ustaše, Nazi, and Italian occupiers. Soberingly, only 20 percent of Yugoslavia’s prewar Jewish population (approximately 12,500) remained in the postwar. Like Salt for Bread does a fine job at highlighting wartime anecdotes from Shoah survivors, Bosnian Righteous among the Nations (forty-nine to date), and the travails of the Sarajevo Haggadah, the famous manuscript hidden and smuggled out of Sarajevo during the war. The Haggadah is now once again in Sarajevo and held in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The strength of Like Salt for Bread lies in the last 200 pages, in which Friedman views the life of the Bosnian Jewish community during the Communist Era and its aftermath in the 1990s. Although sometimes meandering and chronologically disorganized, the last three chapters provide exceptional depth into the Jewish community’s integration into the socialist project. In this section, Friedman argues that the minority group was an essential part of the notion of komsiluk (the neighborhood) despite losing aspects of its organizational agency and religious identity under Tito’s rule. Komsiluk was a belief that Bosnian Jews held on to during the interethnic conflicts in the 1990s and was the reason for the re-establishment of the pre-World War II humanitarian organization, La Benevolencija. Friedman weaves her treatment of La Benevolencija and its suborganizations including the Sarajevo Jewish Pharmacy, the women’s charity, Bohoreta, and the elderly home care program (which ended only in 2018) with delightful testimonies she collected from former volunteer members. The study’s analysis of La Benevolencija as a paradigm of the Jewish minority providing universal aid to its neighbors is complimentary of preexisting scholarship on the Bosnian Jewish community’s wartime efforts. The book contributes to a body of vibrant historical research showing that although they have historically been targets of attacks, in the case of the Bosnian War (1992–95), the Jewish community was a bystander and served as distributors of humanitarian aid.
Francine Friedman ends her impressive work with the present day, noting how the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing incidents of antisemitism, politically supported philo-Semitism, and perpetual conflict in the Middle East have had an impact on the dwindling Bosnian Jewish community. As a parting thought, Friedman leaves readers with a bleak prognosis of the community’s longevity in the future. Considering the increase in ethnonationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina, will the Jews, the salt in the bread, survive when the three main ingredients—flour, yeast, and oil—refuse to mix?
Overall, Like Salt for Bread. The Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a perfect introductory text for any scholar invested in the topic. At times, Friedman’s writing veers into territory where it risks being overly personal rather than scholarly, but that is surely due to her extensive work in Bosnia and Herzegovina and from years of making personal connections within the Jewish community. It is a pity with all her connections that she did not use more of these personal interviews within the text; at moments they felt like an afterthought. Nevertheless, Friedman’s work will hopefully inspire new research to come.
