403 benardete, maír josé → Coriat Family), Elijah undertook traditional dispute with Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto on Jewish biblical and rabbinic studies; at a very the same subject is famous, and he later pub- early age he also began the study of Kabbala, lished their correspondence in his book Ṭaʿam especially the Zohar. la-Shad (Common Sense for SD [Samuel Forced to enter the world of business to earn David]; Livorno, 1863). a living, Benamozegh worked in a counting Benamozegh’s eclectic method of biblical house for several years, but left it to pursue his interpretation, utilizing sources from philol- Jewish studies at the Beth Israel Franco yeshiva. ogy, archaeology, and the natural sciences, is He also acquired, mostly through self-teaching, represented by his famous commentary Em a good knowledge of English, French (which la-Miqraʾ (Matrix of Scripture; 1862–65). he particularly mastered), Latin authors, Greek When the book was harshly criticized by the philosophers, and European thought. He began rabbis of → Aleppo and Jerusalem because of his rabbinical career in 1847 as assistant rabbi its departures from orthodoxy, Benamozegh of the Livorno community and subsequently replied with his Ṣari Gilʿad (Balm of Gilead), was appointed its rabbi. From then on he arguing that Judaism had no choice but to har- devoted himself to preaching, teaching theol- monize its traditional sources and the secular ogy in the local rabbinical school, writing, and sciences if it was to meet the new challenges of publishing and editing Jewish books. modern times. He reiterated this position in Among the works printed by Benamozegh’s his extensive correspondence, which included publishing house were the two-volume important non-Jewish figures like Giuseppe responsa collection Toqpo shel Yosef by Joseph Mazzini, Auguste Renan, Adolphe Franck, and → Elmaleh (1854–55); the responsa Berit Avot Aimé Pallière. The latter edited and published of Abraham → Coriat, his maternal grandfather Israël et l’humanité (Paris, 1914; Eng. trans. (1862); an early edition of the liturgical poetry 1995), left unfinished at the time of Benam- (Heb. piyyutiṃ ) of the Syrian rabbi Mordechai ozegh’s death and regarded as the final synthe- → Abbadi (1864); the Zikhron Yerushalayim of sis of his religious thought. the chief rabbi of Tripoli, Elijah Bekhor Eljiah Benamozegh died in Livorno (which → Ḥazzan (1874), followed by his Taʿalumot he never left) on February 6, 1900. Lev (1879); and the Sefer Ot Berit Qodesh of Joseph Knafo, a kabbalistic work (1884). After Bibliography Benamozegh’s death, his publishing firm was Guetta, Alessandro. Philosophie et cabbale: Essai sur la continued by his only surviving son, Emmanuel pensée d’Elie Benamozegh (Paris and Montreal: Edi- (a lawyer by profession), until it was absorbed tions l’Harmattan, 1998). by the Belforte publishing house in 1925. Luria, Maxwell (ed.). Elijah Benamozegh: Israel and Elijah Benamozegh was, in addition, a pro- Humanity (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1995). Toaff, Alfredo Sabato (ed.). Scritti scelti. Con l’autobiogra- lific author in his own right. His many books fia dell’autore e la prefazione di Yoseph Colombo on Jewish history and ethics in Hebrew, French, (Rome: La Rassegna mensile d’Israel, 1955). and Italian expounded a balanced but forceful defense of the uniqueness of Judaism among Laura Bonifacio Roumani the religions. All his works reveal extensive and profound knowledge of the Jewish sources, which he used also to defend the value of Benardete, Maír José the Kabbala within Judaism. In fact he collabo- rated in compiling the monumental edition of Maír José Benardete (Mair José Benardete; the Zohar that was published in five volumes M. J. Benadete; Meyer Benardete; Mercedes in Livorno in 1851 and subsequently went Benardete; 1895–1989), the eldest of nine chil- through many editions. Then in 1855 he pub- dren, was born in the Ottoman Empire in the lished Eymat Mafgiʿa (Fear of the Gnat/Adver- city of → Çanakkale to a Ladino-speaking fam- sary [the words are homonyms]), a refutation ily. At the age of eight, he contracted a serious of the attacks on the Kabbala by the Venetian illness that left him unable to walk for months. rabbi Judah Aryeh Modena (1571–1648). His He spent his year-long convalescence among benardete, maír josé 404 the Sephardic women of his community, generated articles for the institute’s Revista His- absorbing the → Judeo-Spanish folklore and pánica Moderna, and published a Ladino/Span- language that would later serve as a focus of his ish commemorative volume on the medieval scholarship. After recovering, he enrolled in Spanish-Jewish poet → Judah ha-Levi. The sec- the → Alliance Israélite Universelle school, tion’s artistic endeavors included dramatic and where he studied for four years and, upon musical presentations performed in the 1930s graduation, taught in the lower grades. and 1940s by native speakers of Ladino, some Seeking better economic prospects, Benar- of them Columbia University students. Benar- dete immigrated to the United States in 1910, dete styled himself as a bridge between laymen where he joined an uncle living in a lower-class and scholars, and colleagues credited him for neighborhood in Cincinnati. Benardete accel- achieving a cultural and political rapproche- erated through elementary school, attended ment between U.S. Sephardim and the His- high school, and graduated from the University panic world. of Cincinnati, earning a B.A. in Romance lan- Though Benardete lamented the paucity of guages. Perhaps his earliest research experience studies on Ottoman Jewish civilization, he, like came in 1913, when he assisted the Ashkenazi many other Alliance graduates, disdained social worker Maurice Hexter in a demo- Ladino as a corrupt, bastardized language and graphic survey of Cincinnati’s Ladino-speaking believed that the only redeeming features of community. Benardete’s college years were Middle Eastern Sephardi culture were Iberian. interrupted by service in the U.S. Army during Like many Hispanists of his time, Benardete World War I (1917–1919), which earned him advocated the “modernization” (and thus “cor- American citizenship, and a visit to his paren- rection”) of Ladino dialects to facilitate interac- tal home (1919–1920). tions between Ladino-speaking Jews and Benardete’s interest in Spain and Sephardic Gentile Hispanics. Studies was profoundly shaped by his mentor While his students revered him as an out- and teacher at Columbia University, Federico standing professor and mentor, Benardete’s de Onís (1885–1966), who encouraged him to relations with colleagues and community mem- undertake an M.A. thesis on the Ladino ballads bers could be bristly. In 1936, a series of verbal of the Lower East Side and Harlem. Benardete’s and physical disputes with New York Sephar- fieldwork among the city’s older Sephardic dim, some of whom were affiliated with the women represents the first endeavor to gather Hispanic Institute, stimulated much animosity and record Judeo-Spanish ballads in New York. against both Benardete and the Sephardic Studies He began his academic career as a professor of Section and jeopardized some of his Sephardic- Spanish literature at Hunter College in 1925, related projects. Benardete disdained social and taught at Brooklyn College from 1930 until conventions; for a great while he did not bother his retirement in 1965. His doctoral disserta- to complete his doctoral dissertation, and, though tion, a monograph on Sephardic civilization not a Communist, he publicly defied a McCa- completed in 1950, was finally published in rthyite official who attempted to intimidate fac- 1953 and translated into Spanish a decade later. ulty members at Brooklyn College in the 1950s. Most of Benardete’s other publications focused Long after his retirement, he still invited stu- on Sephardic Studies and Spanish literature. dents and friends to his Brooklyn home every In 1920, Onís founded the Instituto de las Sabbath evening for tertulias—social and intel- Españas en los Estados Unidos (later known as lectual gatherings—during which he would Instituto Hispánico), a cultural and intellectual lecture as if in a university classroom. center at Columbia University that regarded Benardete divorced his first wife, Doris, and Sephardic civilization as part-and-parcel of subsequently married Paula Ovadia de Benar- Spain’s international legacy. Sometime in the dete, a Sephardi woman active in the Sephardic late 1920s, Onís invited Benardete to head the Studies Section and, later, an instructor of institute’s Sephardic Studies Section. Under Spanish and French at Brooklyn College. Benardete’s direction, the Sephardic Section Benardete died at the age of ninety-three of a sponsored lectures on Sephardic civilization, heart attack in his home in Somerville, Massa- 405 benaroya, albert chusetts. His three sons also became academ- School in Istanbul; he also taught French at the ics. Seth Gabriel Benardete (1930–2001) was a prestigious Lycée Galatasaray in Istanbul. classicist and philosopher who taught at New During his time in Damascus, Benaroya York University and the New School; José developed a system of Turkish stenography Amado Benardete is a well-known philosopher based upon two French systems. In 1917, at Syracuse University; and Diego Benardete is the Ministry of Public Instruction adopted his a professor of mathematics at the University of system and appointed him professor of stenog- Hartford. raphy at the École des Hautes Études Commer- ciales (Yüksek Ticaret Mektebi). After the Bibliography proclamation of the Turkish Republic, the Ben-Ur, Aviva. “Embracing the Hispanic: Jews, Puerto Grand National Assembly (parliament) in Ricans, and Spaniards in Immigrant New York → Ankara invited him to teach the first group (1880–1950).” In Studies in Honor of Denah Lida, of state stenographers (1925). Benaroya orga- ed. Lanin Gyurko and Mary G. Berg. (Potomac, nized and supervised a group of twelve young Maryland: Scripta Humanistica, 2005), 403–413. women (nine of them Jews) who recorded the Benardete, Maír José. Hispanic Culture and Character minutes of the First Balkan Conference, which of the Sephardic Jews (New York: Hispanic Institute, met in Istanbul in October 1931. However, 1953). ———. “Los Romances Judeo-Españoles en Nueva credit for his stenographic system went largely York” (M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1923). to a Turk, a fact of life that Benaroya accepted. Ben-Ur, Aviva. Interview with Diego Benardete, March Also while in Damascus, Benaroya collabo- 20, 2007. rated with Captain Mehmet Necip on a reader Besso, Henry V., to Maír José Benardete, February 29, entitled Lectures patriotiques for use in military 1936. In Henry V. Besso collection, American Sep- schools. He included several of his own poems, hardi Federation archives, New York. which he wrote under the pseudonym Çanak- Langnas, Izaac Abram, and Barton Sholod (eds.). Stud- ies in Honor of M. J. Bernardete: Essays in Hispanic kale (Dardanelles). Benaroya also wrote for and Sephardic Culture (New York: Las Americas, 1965). several French-language daily newspapers, ”Mair J. Benardete, 93, Spanish Professor, Dies,” New including → Le Jeune Turc (where he began his York Times (April 19, 1989), p. B7. journalistic career in December 1911), Stam- Sitton, David. Ha-Qehillot ha-Sefaradiyyot be-Yamenu boul or Istanbul (together with Gabriel Mena- (Jerusalem: Vaʿad ʿEdat ha-Sephardim be-Yerusha- sche and Molho), La Republique (the French layim, 1982). edition of Cumhuriyet), Le Journal d’Orient Aviva Ben-Ur (edited by Albert → Carasso), La Presse du Soir, and later, La Turquie. Fluent in French and Turkish, Benaroya also wrote for the pro-Ke- malist İkdam, after the War of Independence. Benaroya, Albert Together with Yaʾakov Kıymaz, Benaroya published Atikva (ha-Tiqva, The Hope) in 1947, Albert (né Armand) Avram Benaroya, a a work encouraging the Jews of Istanbul to Turkish journalist, linguist, and educator, was emigrate to Israel. On July 24, 1948, he founded born in Edirne in 1887 and died in Istanbul on the French-language L’Étoile du Levant (sign- June 20, 1955. He received his primary educa- ing his writings as Albert Benaroya or with his tion at the → Alliance Israélite Universelle nom de plume, Al-Kaya), which was pubished (AIU) school in Edirne, from which he gradu- weekly until two years after his death. He ated at a precocious age, and then attended the believed in international Jewish causes, includ- → École Normale Israélite Orientale (ENIO) in ing Zionism, and his papers often reflected Paris (1906). From October 1910 he taught at such themes. the École Sroṛ ha-Ḥayyim de Hasköy in Istan- bul before being appointed teacher of French at Bibliography a Turkish school in Damascus (1912). He Bali, Rifat N. “Avram Benaroya: Un Journaliste juif remained in Damascus until after the First oublié suivi de ses mémoires,” in Les Cahiers du Bos- World War, then transferred to the Mercan phore 34 (Istanbul: Éditions Isis, 2004).