A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica: The Ladino Memoir of Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi. Edited and with an Introduction by Aron Rodrigue and Sarah Abrevaya Stein. Translation, Transliteration, and Glossary by Isaac Jerusalmi. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8047-7166-5
Reviewed for Musica Judaica Online Reviews by Kathleen Wiens
A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica presents the personal diary of Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi (1820-1903) in English translation and
Ladino transliteration from the original in soletreo (Hebrew script of Ottoman Ladino dialect). Penned starting in 1881, the autobiographical account incorporates event descriptions and commentary on Jewish community life in Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece). Sa’adi’s motivations for writing his memoirs included a desire to record customs and events for future generations, and to voice his personal concerns and hopes for Jewish life in Salonica. Sa’adi’s primary occupations were as an editor and print-maker, but he was also respected within the Jewish community and city as a singer and composer of songs for synagogue and special occasions. It is this second occupation that makes A Jewish Voice a valuable resource for readers with interest in music and Jewish life.
A Jewish Voice is divided into three main parts: a 47-page Editors’ Introduction, the English translation of Sa’adi’s diary, and a transliteration of the diary into Romanized Ladino text. (Facsimiles of the original hand-written manuscript are accessible online via the publisher’s website.) Sa’adi divided the diary into 42 chapters, some of which were further divided into event-specific or thematically-based sections. The editors have added numeric symbols beside chapter and section headings to allow cross-reference with the online soletreo manuscript, while also providing introductory notes on dialect, pronunciation, translation, transliteration, and explanations of in-text references (weight, currencies, measurements). An extensive glossary of Ladino, Turkish and Hebrew terms and a list of works referenced complete the edition. Read the rest of this entry »
During the last two decades a formidable number of excellent studies have appeared in English and German that have given us an ever fuller picture of the compromised, politicized reality of Germany’s musical culture during the National Socialist period. Lily Hirsch’s book, A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany: Musical Politics and the Berlin Jewish Culture League, is a valuable contribution to this body of knowledge.
In the annals of Jewish music, is any genre as fraught as opera? In nineteenth-century Europe, this most elaborate of western art forms seduced and dazzled Jewish admirers from Theodor Herzl (whose visions of Zionism were inspired by Tannhäuser) to Emma Goldman (transfixed by a performance of Il Trovatore in Königsberg). The lure of opera for cantors became the stuff of legends (the story of Yoel-Dovid Strashunsky’s fall from grace when he abandoned the synagogue in Vilna for the opera house in Warsaw inspired works of fiction, theater, and film). Jewish opera composers became celebrities (Meyerbeer, Offenbach), and their musicianship the target of anti-Semitic attack (most famously, Wagner’s Das J
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