Ḥayim Shaki

Born near Istanbul, Ḥayim Yitsḥak Shaki worked for many years in commerce, but in the 1890s, he turned to creating Ladino religious texts; his goal was to make classical and rabbinic Judaism accessible to rapidly modernizing Sephardim who were unable to read Hebrew. His writings include a work about the mishnaic tractate Pirke Avot (Chapters of the Fathers), the sixteen-volume La historia judía universal (Universal History of Judaism, 1898–1927), which took him several decades, and the 1899 Ladino commentary on the Song of Songs. He wrote this last as a volume of Me‘am Lo‘ez, the famous Ladino-language Bible commentary project launched in 1730 and collectively authored by successive generations of Sephardic rabbis thereafter. The language of Shaki’s commentary is highly Gallicized. At some point, Shaki served as av bet din (head of the Jewish religious court) of Istanbul.