Rafael Uziel

Rafael Uziel was a merchant, journalist, and publisher of the first Ladino periodical. A Tuscan subject, he was born in Izmir, where his ancestors had moved from Livorno in the seventeenth century. In 1842, Uziel attempted to publish a Ladino newspaper, La Buena Esperansa (The Good Hope), but did not succeed because he could not garner enough subscriptions. In 1845, however, he began to publish Sha‘are mizraḥ/Las puertas de Oriente (The Gates of the East). Printed by an English Protestant press, the first Ladino newspaper appeared through November 1846, when it closed for financial reasons. Later, Uziel moved to Gallipoli and the Dardanelles, where he represented the Alliance Israélite Universelle and served as a correspondent for the Paris Ladino periodical El verdadero progreso israelita.