Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture

✍ Scribed by Matthias B. Lehmann

Publisher: Indiana University Press
Year: 2005
Tongue: English
Leaves: 281
Series: Jewish Literature and Culture
Category: Library

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis

In this pathbreaking book, Matthias B. Lehmann explores Ottoman Sephardic culture in an era of change through a close study of popularized rabbinic texts written in Ladino, the vernacular language of the Ottoman Jews. This vernacular literature, standing at the crossroads of rabbinic elite and popular cultures and of Hebrew and Ladino discourses, sheds valuable light on the modernization of Sephardic Jewry in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th century. By helping to form a Ladino reading public and imparting shape to its values, the authors of this literature negotiated between perpetuating rabbinic tradition and addressing the challenges of modernity. The book offers close readings of works that examine issues such as social inequality, exile and diaspora, gender, secularization, and the clash between scientific and rabbinic knowledge. Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture will be welcomed by scholars of Sephardic as well as European Jewish history, culture, and religion.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
CONTENTS......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 8
Introduction......Page 12
Part I. Vernacular Musar Literature as a Cultural Factor......Page 24
1. Historical Background......Page 26
2. Print and the Vernacular: The Emergence of Ladino ReadingCulture......Page 42
Part II. Authors, Translators, Readers......Page 60
3. The Translation and Reception of Musar......Page 62
4. “Pasar la Hora” or “Meldar”? Forms of Sociability......Page 87
Part III. Musar Literature and the Social Order......Page 100
5. The Construction of the Social Order......Page 102
6. Three Social Types: The Wealthy, the Poor, the Learned......Page 114
7. The Representation of Gender......Page 132
Part IV. Exile and History......Page 146
8. Understanding Exile, Setting Boundaries......Page 148
9. The Impossible Homecoming......Page 167
10. Reincarnation and the Discovery of History......Page 184
Part V. The Challenge of Modernity......Page 196
11. Scienti¤c and Rabbinic Knowledge and the Notion of Change......Page 198
Conclusion......Page 213
Notes......Page 220
Bibliography......Page 252
Index......Page 268

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