Full Description
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.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1Historical Background
Part I Vernacular Musar Literature as a Cultural Factor
2Print and the Vernacular: The Emergence of Ladino Reading Culture
Part II Authors, Translators, Readers
3The Translation and Reception of Musar
4"Pasar la Hora" or "Meldar"? Forms of Sociability
Part III Musar Literature and the Social Order
5The Construction of the Social Order
6Three Social Types: The Wealthy, the Poor, the Learned
7The Representation of Gender
Part IV Exile and History
8Understanding Exile, Setting Boundaries
9The Impossible Homecoming
10Reincarnation and the Discovery of History
Part V The Challenge of Modernity
11Scientific and Rabbinic Knowledge and the Notion of Change
12Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Index