Multilevel Identity in the Balkans. Rafael Moshe Kamhi – Jewish, Macedonian, Bulgarian?

Born in Bitola in the Ottoman Empire in a family of Sephardi Jews, Rafael Moshe Kamhi (1870-1970) started to be an integral part of both the Macedonian and Bulgarian historical discourse from the end of the 20th and the very beginning of the 21st century. However, for a researcher from outside the region, it is interesting to note that his biography is presented in each of these two national narratives from only one point of view, either Macedonian or Bulgarian.

Kamhi spoke Ladino as well as knowing Turkish, Greek, French, Bulgarian and the vernacular language of Macedonian Slavs, but the archives that he left contain documents in Bulgarian and Ladino.It seems that the analytical key which could help to understand the complicated biography of Rafael Kamhi is the understanding of the notion of Macedonia and Macedonian in Bulgarian and Macedonian discourses at that time, as well as the context of a documents from his archives.

I will analyse the biography of Moshe Kamhi within the wider context of the biography issue in the Balkans from the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. This could bring the Jewish Question within and out of its local Jewish boundaries and introduce it into a regional context. It could give us a new information about Jewish identity in the region, and the identity issue as a whole, and about the history of Jews in this region.