Mordechai Seror

Not much is known about Mordechai Seror, who was born in Algiers to a distinguished family of scholars. Seror was an author, rabbi, and religious judge who, in 1884, partnered with another Algerian rabbi, Abraham Boukabza (1856–1933), to open a publishing house and bookstore. Their first publication, Kol sasson (The Voice of Gladness), was a collection of Judeo-Arabic stories by Seror, written to provide modern Judeo-Arabic reading material to a local population increasingly drawn toward French. Seror also published a Passover Haggadah with French translation, financed by Boukabza, at the Livornese press of Israel Costa in 1885/6. Seror and Boukabza’s bookstore sold liturgical books, works of rabbinic law and commentary, collections of sermons by local rabbis, books of the Haskalah, and popular Judeo-Arabic literature. At the end of 1886, Boukabza and Seror were joined by Shalom Bekache (1848–1927), who, by 1890, took over the publishing house completely.