La Buena Esperansa (The Good Hope)

Hamburg, July 7. (Personal communication) In Smyrna, a newspaper will now be published in the Jewish-Spanish language commonly spoken there, entitled La Buena Esperansa. We have the prospectus dated 12 Sivan, which announces the subscription price of 100 piasters per annum (approximately 12 thalers) and a weekly publication. The contents will contain commercial news, current commodity prices, exchange rates, shipping port traffic reports, auction and sales announcements, as well as political news from all parts of the world, and finally articles aimed at spreading light and knowledge among the Jews of the Turkish Empire. [Here follows an approximate reconstruction of the two Ladino quotations from Uziel’s prospectus.] “And we will often publish things necessary for success with which few people of our nation in these parts are familiar. . . . But the sages in our parts of Turkey do not waste or employ their time on such things, nor do they study, and this is so because of the great poverty and a great lack of money in these parts.”