"What an intellectual treat is this poignant epitaph for a lost civilization!. "It is an important contribution to the corpus of texts illustrating how communities and individuals experienced the transition from life in a traditional Jewish community to citizenship in the modern nation-state." Harvey Sukenic, Association of Jewish Libraries "This work, with its rare look at the struggle between traditional society and modernizing trends in a nineteenth century Sephardic community, adds to our understanding of the beginnings of modernity in a Sephardic mode." The experience of excommunication pervades Sa'adi's memoir, which documents a world that its author was himself actively involved in changing. He was also a rebel who accused the Jewish leadership of Salonica of being corrupt, abusive, and fanatical that leadership, in turn, excommunicated him from the Jewish community. Sa'adi was a prominent journalist and publisher, one of the most significant creators of modern Sephardic print culture.
His vivid portrayal of life in Salonica, a major port in the Ottoman Levant with a majority Jewish population, thus provides a unique window into a way of life before it disappeared as a result of profound political and social changes and the World Wars. The memoirist, Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi (1820–1903), wrote about Ottoman Jews' daily life at a time when the finely wrought fabric of Ottoman society was just beginning to unravel. This book presents for the first time the complete text of the earliest known Ladino-language memoir, transliterated from the original script, translated into English, and introduced and explicated by the editors.
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