Rachel Sharaby received her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel. She is a lecturer in sociology in the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Department at Bar-Ilan University and at the Academic College of Ashkelon. She has published two books in Hebrew. The first book, The Spanish Settlement in Jerusalem at the Height of the Ottoman Period (2000), deals with the leadership and the social relations between the various Jewish groups in Jerusalem. The second book, Syncretism and Adjustment: The Meeting between a Traditional Community and a Socialist Community (2002), deals with the inevitable conflict between the immigrants from Yemen and the socialist society in Israel before the establishment of the State of Israel and the process of compromise that occurred between the two cultures.