Unknown Regulations in Ladino from Salonika (ca. 1740): Ethos, Ideal, Reality

Abstract

In the mid-1930s, Viennese bookseller David Fränkel described a booklet containing regulations in Ladino. Its whereabouts were unknown until it recently appeared in a public auction in Jerusalem. Though Fränkel attributed it to Istanbul, his description leaves no room for doubt that this is the same text, but internal evidence points to Salonika. The four-page booklet is unsigned and undated; one can only conjecture that it was printed in the mid-1740s upon the initiative of the rabbinical and communal leadership in Salonika. It contains two groups of regulations…