Olga Borovaya explores the emergence and expansion of print culture in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), the mother tongue of the Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman Empire, in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. She provides the first comprehensive study of the three major forms of Ladino literary production-the press, belles lettres, and theater-as a single cultural phenomenon. The product of meticulous research and innovative methodology, Modern Ladino Culture offers a new perspective on the history of the Ladino press, a novel approach to the study of belles lettres in Ladino and their relationship to their European sources, and a fine-grained critique of Sephardic plays as venues for moral education and politicization.

The literary culture of the Ottoman Empire's Sephardic Jews

About the Author

Olga Borovaya is a visiting scholar at Stanford University. She is author of Modernization of a Culture (in Russian).

Reviews

Borovaya's meticulously-researched book examines the relationship between linguistic and historical developments as they come into view through these Ladino texts.1.2 2013

* Journal of Jewish Languages *

Olga Borovaya's brilliant book-the first comprehensive study of modern Ladino print culture-transforms our understanding of the Ottoman Sephardi world in the era of westernisation that preceded its demise. . . [T]his terrific book is a work of prodigious scholarship and arresting insight. It should be required reading not just for modern Jewish historians, but for all those interested in literacy, secularisation and the impact of the West in the Ottoman world. Dec. 2015

* English Historical Review *

With detailed notes and an index Borovaya presents a comprehensive but highly readable analysis which provides a welcome companion to the study of a rather rare collection of materials.

* Jewish Book Council *

Olga Borovaya has written a highly intelligent and highly intelligible book on Ladino literary production in the modernizing, secularizing final century and a half of the Ottoman empire. Borovaya brings clarity and freshness to an area of study that has long remained the hotly debated and often fiercely guarded domain of a small clutch of scholars.

* Slavic Review *

This is a groundbreaking and comprehensive study of the modernization of the culture of a minority group. ... On the basis of exhaustive research, Borovaya combines enlightening analysis with detailed information in a study that provides an innovative approach to the study of Ladino culture and Sephardi history. In addition to scholars of Sephardi studies, this work is of tremendous importance for those interested in cultural developments among minority groups, and the interconnections among various cultural aspects.

* H-Judaic *


Awards
Short-listed for Jewish Book Council National Jewish Book Award: Sephardic Studies 2012.



Book Information
ISBN 9780253356727
Author Olga Borovaya
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 612g