conciencia documentaria de los sefardíes en los archivos personales: el caso de Judá Haim Perahiá

La empresa de coleccionar y archivar materiales entre los intelectuales sefardíes puede considerarse un fenómeno moderno en el campo de la cultura material. Este proceso tardío, que comenzó entre los sefardíes sólo a finales del siglo XIX, es uno de los resultados directos del impacto de la Ilustración judía, la Haskalá. El presente artículo se centrará en la descripción y el análisis del Archivo Perahiá, custodiado en la Biblioteca Ben-Zvi de Jerusalén. Este estudio de caso, que ofrece un corpus significativo para reflexionar sobre la autoconciencia documentaria de los sefardíes en el período moderno, podrá servir de modelo para estudiar otros archivos similares.

Identity and Writing: the Case of Eastern Sephardic Women

Access to written culture, which began to be widespread among Sephardic women in the former Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth century, opens a new perspective in gender studies of the Jewish minority in Muslim societies. Writing constitutes one of the main vehicles through which individuals appropriate their own identity and culture. In this sense, female Eastern Sephardic writers represent a fascinating example of how a cultural minority elaborates its consciousness and the awareness of its past. This article deals with this specific issue: the way that both the first Sephardic female writers and those who followed were able to elaborate a new identity through the act of writing and the awareness of its multiple possibilities. The first Sephardic female writers (Reina Hakohén, Rosa Gabay and Laura Papo) show us their contradictions: the identification with the traditional roles of women, the continuous justifications of their work as writers, the redefinition of what means to be a female writer in the context of Eastern Sephardic societies.

Bezes desconocido y su obra: El detektive kriminal (Salónica, 1935)

Dentro del conjunto de editoriales regentadas por miembros de la comunidad judía en la Salónica de finales del siglo XIX y comienzos del XX, destaca la figura de Baruh David Bezes. Entre los numerosos títulos que produjo encontramos El Buketo de Pesah (1935), que, entre sus cuatro relatos, contiene el titulado El detektive kriminal. El objetivo de estas páginas será el de analizar este texto cuyo autor probablemente es el hijo menos conocido del impresor, Armando Bezes, a la luz de la literatura detectivesca coetánea a su narración.

Refael-Vivante, Revital y Refael-Vivante, Shmuel. (2019). Las andanzas de Sofar. Edición crítica y estudio de un cuento hebreo Maasé Sofar (Salónica, 1600).

Reseña.

The Hebrew Root ˀ-m-n and its Derivatives hɛˀěmīn and nɛˀĕman in both Medieval Spanish and Ladino Translations of the Bible

The Hebrew root ˀ-m-n is related to a number of different words found in the Hebrew Bible, for instance, hɛˀěmīn ‘believe, trust, confide, be sure’, nɛˀĕman ‘was trustworthy’, ˀemūn ‘trust’, ˀěmūnā ‘faith, belief, trust’, ˀĕmɛṯ ‘truth’, and ˀāmen ‘amen’. The purpose of this paper is to examine, contrast and compare various translations of the derivatives of this root, hɛˀěmīn and nɛˀĕman/ nɛˀĕmān, which appear in both medieval Spanish and in Ladino versions of the Bible from the 16th century onwards, and to explore the extent to which these translations are diverse in their interpretations. This comparison enables us to establish the claim that Ladino versions of the Bible developed independently and are not based on earlier medieval Spanish translations.

The Sephardi origin of the Challah braided bread

This article will challenge the assumption that the challah bread is not of Ashkenazi origin but instead of Sephardic origin. It claims to uncover the place of challah bread in history through a historiographical analysis, followed by a study of old sources that mentions it – even including the first recipe – thus, bringing down the previously established postulates. This article also purports to offering an explanation on the link between Ashkenazi and challah bread, which has made it the paragon – alongside the gefiltefish – of the Jewish cuisine from Eastern Europe.

Memories of Salonica: Estrea Aelion celebrates her one hundredth birthday

Estrea Aelion was born in Salonica in 1884. She belonged to a well-off family; her grandfather opened Salonica’s first department store and her father was a jeweller. In 1994, she celebrated her hundredth birthday in London and dictated her memories for her family and, especially, for her great grandchildren. Estrea Aelion lived at the beginning of a period of great change for Salonica and the Jewish community. Her memories are not a formal historical document, they are personal experiences. She was one of the first girls to go to school, in her case a missionary one, although her brothers went to an Alliance Israélite Universelle school. She witnessed the arrival of modern inventions such as electricity and running water. She lived through the catastrophic 1890 and 1917 fires. Estrea Aelion’s memories, however personal they may be, are a document of great interest to all those interested in a vanished world.