Diary

Abraham Rosanes

1864

In the month of Tevet of the same year I entered that school and began studying Greek with tremendous dedication. I repented of all my previous actions and habits, just as I had promised my father (of blessed memory) that I would. My desire to learn that language was immense, so much so that I turned night into day, sleeping only very little and…

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Creator Bio

Abraham Rosanes

1838–1879

A scholar and merchant, Abraham Rosanes was a chronicler and leader in the Ottoman Jewish community. Hailing from Rusçuk (now Ruse, Bulgaria), he was part of a prominent Sephardic family. In 1867 he traveled to Palestine, recording his experiences. His travelogue and letters home were translated from their original Solitreo—a form of Ladino—to Hebrew and published under Rosanes’s acronym Abir (or HeAbir). Returning to Rusçuk, he founded a secular Jewish school in 1869. He engaged in a nonacademic but valuable ethnographic study of the Ottoman Jewry. His commitment to Jewish education and history were taken up by his son, Solomon, with whom Rosanes sought refuge in Istanbul during the Russo-Ottoman War (1877–1878).

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