The Golden Garden

David Attias

1778

[The lessons a mother should give her son]: My son, you should know that before your body looked the way it does now, it was nothing. You were formed in my belly from the drops of fertility that came from me and your father, and thus you grew in my belly, and nine months later I gave birth to you and delivered you into this world. But you should…

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Creator Bio

David Attias

Mid- to Late Eighteenth Century

Merchant and writer David Attias championed the use of Ladino, the vernacular language common among Jews of the Ottoman Empire. Born in Sarajevo, he moved to Livorno (Leghorn) in 1769. As part of the vibrant Sephardic community in the Ottoman Empire, he decried the lack of historical, scientific, and popular literature written in Ladino. Blaming conservatism and traditionalism for this lack, Attias’s La güerta de oro (The Golden Garden), an education anthology covering a variety of practical topics, sought to fill this void and was likely the first secular work written in Ladino. His views on modernization, education, and language reform would inspire later Haskalah thinkers.

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