Joseph ben Nissim Kaṣabi (Qaṣṣabi) ( ca. 1625- ca. 1690) was a rabbi and scholar in the Ottoman Empire. Born in Istanbul around 1625 and educated at the yeshiva of Joseph ben Moses Ṭrani (Miṭrani) the Elder (1569–1639), Kaṣabi was one of the foremost religious teachers in the Ottoman capital and often sought to obtain the agreement of other prominent rabbis on matters that he taught his students. He maintained a close friendship with Abraham ben Meʾir Rosanes (ca. 1635–1720) and corresponded with other important rabbinical figures of the time, receiving queries on hal…

The Judeo-Spanish newspaper Avanté (Forward), initially a weekly, then a daily, was published in Salonica from 1912 to 1934, printed in Hebrew Rashi characters. Avanté promoted the interests of the city’s Jewish workers and its pages are an important source for the history of the Jewish labor movement. The paper was founded by Avraam Benaroya, a socialist leader and head of the Workers’ Socialist Federation of Salonica (Selanik Sosyalist Işci Federasyonu), to replace his Turkish newspaper Mücadele after the Greeks took control of Salonica. (Previously he had published La Solidarida…

Mordechai Bekhor ben Solomon Kalai (Qalaʽi, ca. 1556–1647) was a rabbi and scholar in the Ottoman Empire. Born in Salonica, he received his education from such renowned rabbis as Aaron ben Joseph Sasson (1550 or 1555–1626), Aaron ibn Ḥason, and Isaac Franco. Although not of Sephardi extraction (he was perhaps Romaniot or Ashkenazi), Kalai was trained in the Sephardi tradition and eventually headed the yeshiva and synagogue of the Portugal Yaḥiyya congregation. A pious and humble scholar, he taught numerous students, many of whom went on to become noted figures in…

Joseph ben Solomon ibn Verga (d. 1559) was a rabbi, author, and scholar who was active in the Ottoman Empire during the first half of the sixteenth century. Probably born near Seville, Ibn Verga went to Istanbul with his family via Portugal after the expulsions from Iberia, and later settled in Edirne (Adrianople). He studied under Joseph Fasi and was a contemporary of Jacob Tam ben David Ibn Yaḥya (ca. 1475–1542) and Moses Hamon (ca. 1490–ca. 1554), both of whom were imperial physicians to Süleyman I Kanuni (Sul…

Le Jeune Turc was a daily newspaper in French published in Istanbul from 1908 to 1918. It was edited by Sami Hochberg, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and the Turkish journalist Celâl Nuri. The origins of Le Jeune Turc lay in Le Courrier d’Orient, owned by Ebüzziya Tevfik, an outspokenly antisemitic deputy from Antalya. Hochberg, Victor Jacobson, David Wolffsohn, and other Zionists purchased the paper from Tevfik in 1909 and transformed it into an organ sympathetic to the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Under their control, the paper promoted the CUP and its program, democrac…

The maʿamad (Heb. assembly; rendered in Latin characters by western Sephardi communities as mahamad) was an executive council that managed the secular affairs of many Jewish congregations in the Ottoman Empire and other parts of the Sephardi Diaspora. Usually made up of seven members (the so-called seven best men of the city; Heb. shivʿat ṭove ha-ʿir), although some councils were smaller, it functioned alongside the community’s spiritual leadership. Tax-paying members of the congregation elected aldermen (Heb. parnasim, sing. parnas) at public gatherings in a fairly democ…

Albert Carasso (Karasu, 1885–1982)was a Jewish journalist and political scientist in Turkey. Born in Salonica, Carasso learned French from his parents and then attended the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). After completing his studies, Carasso moved to Istanbul, where in 1918 he founded and edited the French-language daily Le Journal d’Orient (1918–1924, 1926–1971). Carasso intended the newspaper to reach an elite audience in Istanbul; its readership, particularly in later years, consisted mostly of minorities. Albert Av…

Shabbetai Levi (Istanbul, April 10, 1876 – Ḥaifa, November, 1, 1956) was a noted early Zionist leader. As the first Jewish mayor of Haifa, he oversaw the city’s rapid development during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Istanbul on April 10, 1876, to Siman-Ṭov Nathan ha-Levi, a merchant and businessman, and Sarah née Pereṣ, he received both a traditional and a modern education and graduated from the Faculty of Political Science and Administration at Istanbul University. He moved to Palestine in 1894 a…

Abraham Danon, who was born in Edirne (Adrianople) on August 15, 1857, and died in Paris on May 23, 1925, was a Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) rabbi, educator, writer, and linguist. A student of the noted Orientalist Joseph Halévy, but largely autodidactic, he sought throughout his life to synthesize traditional learning with modern ideas. In 1879, he founded the Ḥevrat Shoḥare Tushiyya (Society of the Proponents of Wisdom), also called Dorshe ha-Haskala (Seekers of Enlightenment), in Edirne. He encouraged the study of Jewish history and literature, particularly that o…

Since the late nineteenth century, the Recanati family has consisted of journalists, Zionist activists, and financiers who flourished in the Ottoman Empire, Greece, and Israel. The family traces its origins to central Italy—Tuscany, the city of Livorno on the western coast, and the eastern Marche—and counts among its ancestors the late-thirteenth-century rabbinical scholar and kabbalist Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati. Members of the family in Salonica entered various fields of business and made the Recanatis one of the leading families of the Jewish elite. …

Jacob ben David Tam Ibn Yaḥya (ca. 1475–1542) was one of the leading Jewish scholars in Istanbul and indeed the Ottoman Empire during the first half of the sixteenth century. In addition to Judaica and rabbinics, he commanded a broad knowledge of medicine, Islamic law, and other subjects. Jacob was born in Lisbon into a prosperous and distinguished family of rabbis, scholars, and communal leaders. His father, David ben Solomon Ibn Yaḥya (ca. 1440–1524), was rabbi of the community, but was driven from the country under persecution by King João II(r. 1481–1495) while Jacob was still…

Daniel ben Abraham de Fonseca (ca. 1668–ca. 1740) was a Jewish physician of Iberian origin who achieved prominence for his involvement in Ottoman diplomacy. Born into a marrano family in the Portuguese city of Porto, Fonseca grew up as a Christian after his grandfather and uncle were burned at the stake and his father fled the country. Although he was baptized and joined the priesthood, he practiced the Jewish faith secretly and eventually went to France, where he studied medicine in Bordeaux and Paris. Sometime between 1680 and 1702, he arrived Istanbul, where he reverted to Judais…

Barukh ben Isaac Miṭrani (1847–1919) was a rabbi, educator, writer, Hebrew reformer, and noted precursor of Zionism in Edirne during the second half of the nineteenth century. A precocious child, he received a specialized education from both his father, a Hebrew teacher, and another noted Sephardi intellectual figure, Joseph Halévy (1827–1917). The latter recognized his ability and mentored him; Miṭrani would become his spiritual successor, carrying on, expanding, and building upon his ideas throughout his life. After traditionalist opponents…

La Nation was a bi-weekly, then weekly, and later daily newspaper published in Salonica from 1900 to 1913. Edited by Judah Salomon Asseo, and printed in Judeo-Spanish (using Rashi script) and French, it served as an organ of the Cercle (later Club) des Intimes, a Jewish philanthropic and cultural organization in Salonica, as stated in its subtitle, “Revista Nasional Judea Independiente, organo del Club des Intimes.” The Cercle des Intimes was founded in 1873, and was restructured in 1907 as the Club des Intimes.For a brief period, La Nation flirted with Zionism and printed articles by Vlad…

Samuel Primo (Cairo, ca. 1635 or 1640–Edirne, 1705 or 1708) was a rabbinical scholar who served as a scribe to the false messiah Shabbetay Ṣevi (1626–1676) and remained a secret adherent to Sabbateanism in his later life, Born in Cairo in either 1635 or 1640, Primo was one of the brightest pupils in the yeshiva of Judah Sharaf. He moved to Jerusalem around 1662 and  represented the city’s Jewish community in a lawsuit against Judah ben David Ḥabillo (d. 1661) to obtain the funds collected in Izmir by his father. When Shabbetay Ṣevi arrived in the city in June 1665, Pr…

Avraam Benaroya, a socialist leader and journalist, was born in Bidini, Bulgaria, in 1886 and died in Ḥolon, Israel, in 1979 (?). Raised in Lundt, Bulgaria, Benaroya studied law in Belgrade, but left his studies to teach in Plovdiv, where he published The Jewish Question and Social Democracy (in Bulgarian). Immediately after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, he moved to Salonica, where he worked as a typographer and soon organized the Sephardi Circle of Socialist Studies, which initially counted thirty members. Dumont notes that Benaroya’s group fell within the “Broad” facti…

Tobias ben Moses Cohn (Ṭuviyya Cohen) (1652–1729) was a noted physician who served five successive Ottoman sultans. He was born in 1652 in Metz into a family of physicians from Poland (his grandfather Eleazar Cohn had gone to Poland from Palestine around the turn of the seventeenth century; his father, Moses Cohn, fled westward in 1648 to escape the Chmielnicki [Khmelnytsky] uprising). Orphaned at an early age, Cohn received a traditional upbringing in Metz and then was educated at a seminary in Cracow. He began his medical studies at the University of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder in 1678, …

Bekhor Isaac David ben Elia Carmona (1773–1826)was an important merchant, courtier, Jewish community leader, and political figure in the Ottoman Empire whose influence reached its peak under Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839). Born in Istanbul to the distinguished Carmona family, which produced a number of prominent figures on the Ottoman political, economic, and social scene during the empire’s last centuries, Carmona built upon the financial and political success of his uncle Moses ben Isaac Carmona, who had founded a bank and obtained a concession for the sale of alum ( şap), succee…

The Club des Intimes was a Jewish cultural association in Salonica from 1873 through the 1910s. Under its original name, Cercle des Intimes, it was founded by a group of intellectuals and leaders as a secular club to promote Jewish cultural activities and philanthropy, and became known for its famous library. The initial membership, reflecting the club’s elitist name, was made up of economic leaders, merchants, and foreign-educated intellectuals. One member, Samuel Tiano, was an important local manufacturer and donated great sums of money to further the club’s reformist …

Isaac Ṣarfati was a German rabbi who settled in the Ottoman Empire prior to the conquest of Istanbul in 1453. He is thought to have been the author of the famous circular letter urging the Jewish communities of Central Europe to immigrate to the Ottoman realms. Although his surname indicates a family origin in northern France ( Ṣarfat), Ṣarfati came to the Ottoman Empire from Germany. Soon afterwards, he became a prominent member of the rabbinate of the Jewish community in Edirne (Adrianople), then the Ottoman capital. Rosanes and others have argued that Ṣarfati served as chief ra…