Memories of a Childhood Spent in Ottoman Bulgaria

Gabriel Arié

1906

I understood very early that life is a serious business. I do not remember committing any of those childish pranks that everyone keeps in his distant memory. From the age of four I was sent to the meldar,1 where I had the following teachers in succession: Béhar the melamed,2 who taught me to read; Harbi3 Haïm, who taught me the prayers, the perasch…

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Creator Bio

Gabriel Arié

1863–1939

Born in Samokov (Ottoman Bulgaria) to a Sephardic family from Vienna, Gabriel Arié received his education through the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) system. He continued to Paris, where he attended the AIU teachers’ seminar and, in 1881, was appointed as a teacher to Ortaköy (near Istanbul). In 1885 he moved to Sofia, and finally to Izmir (Smyrna) in 1895. While based in Izmir, he helped establish a Jewish workers’ union, AIU schools, and AIU alumni associations. A strong advocate of Ottoman patriotism in the imperial era, Arié instead came to support Zionism in response to the rising antisemitism of the interwar period.

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