Abraham (Avram) Galante (usually with Gallicized spelling: Galanté), the scion of a distinguished Sephardi family in Bodrum, Ottoman Turkey, was a historian of Jewish and Eastern peoples, a linguist, journalist, educator, and social activist, and an exponent of the Ottoman Jewish Haskala. Born in 1873, Galante never married and devoted his entire life to intellectual and political pursuits. He was proficient in Turkish, Judeo-Spanish, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, German, French, English, Greek, and Armenian. He died in Istanbul in 1961.

Galante received his primary education…