Dov Cohen

• PhD
• Senior Lecturer at Bar Ilan University

The article by Dov Cohen and Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald, “Laws of Sheḥiṭah (Slaughtering) in Ladino, Constantinople (Kushta) 1510 printing,” which opens this volume, is dedicated to the remnants of a printed halachic work in Ladino found among the folios of the Genizah. This is most likely the first work in Ladino printed by exiles from Spain who s...

The following article discusses Sephardic society in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century – a period of dramatic upheaval in many areas. Inter alia, these changes impacted Sephardic Jewry’s reading habits and literary output. Alarmed by these developments, the conventional rabbinic establishment sought to wield its authority in an effort to s...

Jewish circumcision registers are personal documents which were kept by the mohel (the ritual circumciser) on his own initiative and for his own specific purposes, and he used them to record every circumcision that he performed. The mohel’s individual character and talents influenced the register’s contents and aesthetic features. Due to both the e...

Entre 1552 y 1965 se publicaron muchas traducciones de Pirqué Abot (ʻTratado de los Padresʼ) en ladino, en caracteres hebreos o latinos, en las ciudades del Imperio oto­mano, denominadas orientales, así como en las ciudades de Italia, Ámsterdam y Londres, consideradas occidentales. La primera traducción aljamiada conocida es la versión de Venecia d...

The following article discusses one of the 19th century’s most fascinating Judeo-Spanish egodocuments: the memoir of Salonikan poet and publisher Sa'adi Halevi-Eskenazi, an influential cultural and literary icon, renowned in Sephardic communities throughout Turkey and the Balkans. This article examines an expanded version of the memoir, which has y...

In recent years, previously-unknown ladino books and editions have been found in public libraries, in private collections, and among the vast amount of material preserved for centuries in the Cairo Genizah. The thousands of fragments contained in the Genizah include fragments of undocumented Sephardic Bibles dating back to the Ottoman Empire. This...

Saadi Halevi-Ashkenazi was a man of many talents who was involved in a wide range of cultural pursuits. A fourth-generation publisher, he transformed his family’s printing house into one of the Ottoman Empire’s leading establishments and released hundreds of books, in both Hebrew and Ladino. The two long-lasting newspapers – one in Ladino and one i...

It is commonly accepted that Hilkhot Sheḥiṭa u-Vdika (literally, ‘The Laws of Ritual Slaughter and Examination’—Constantinople ca. 1510) was the first publication ever printed in Judeo-Spanish. Yet scholars possessed no evidence that the work actually existed, and no information was available regarding its contents or language. Recently, however, t...

Today, the term soletreo, signifying a cursive form of Sephardic writing, is common coinage among Judeo-Spanish speakers. Indeed, the term has become increasingly ubiquitous even within Judeo-Spanish academic discourse, where it refers to the script used by Sephardic writers throughout the generations. However, little attention has been paid to the...

R. Yaʿakov ben Asher (circa 1270-1343) is regarded as one of the greatest Jewish sages of all times. He was born in Germany but spent most of his life in Spain. His comprehensive halachic work, Arbaʿah Turim, cemented his place in the Jewish world just behind Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, and he became known as Baʿal Ha-Turim. There are two different opi...

A comprehensive project conducted over the past few years to locate and document every book printed in Ladino, revealed that between the years 1490–1960, nearly four thousand titles were published. In this article, I will show that many Ladino books were lost over the generations. Some of those missing books were referenced in assorted sources. Oth...

Personal correspondence generally serves as an important primary source for historians. Yet, the letters that will be presented in this chapter are also significant for another reason: the language in which they were written. Indeed, these letters constitute a new resource for scholars of Jewish languages, because they were written in Portuguese Al...

The many studies published about Captain Barros Basto have taught us much about his dynamic life and tireless efforts for the “Obra do Resgate,” his rescue work on behalf of Portuguese crypto-Jews during the early twentieth century. Yet, to date, little is known about his robust and extensive literary output. This study is meant to fill that gap an...

Shulchan ha-Panim was published anonymously during the late sixteenth century, and in spite of numerous efforts at solving the puzzle, the author’s identity is still unknown. Yet determining who wrote Shulhan ha-Panim is not only bibliographically significant – it was one of the first books to be printed in Judeo-Spanish – but the work is also hist...

Rabbi Abraham Hamuy (1838-1886), one of the most colorful rabbinic figures of the nineteenth century, was active in many countries – from Italy, France and Morroco in the West, to Iraq and India in the East. He wrote over fifty works, spanning a wide range of topics, and to date, fifteen of these works have been published. His writings deal with ra...