Two Perceptions of Change in Judeo-Spanish Rabbinic Literature Matthias B. Lehmann. CSIC, Madrid

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the brief references to the invention of the telegraph in Yeuda Papo's Judeo-Spanish version of the Pele Yo ´ets and Ben Tsion Rodeti's Sefer Ki Ze Kol ha-Adam, two Judeo-Spanish books of musar from the nineteenth century. These rather unlikely references permit us to study perceptions of present, future, and change held by two Sephardic rabbis from the Ottoman Empire in a period of accelerated technological progress and social transformation. Two different attitudes towards change can be described. While Papo's work announces important transformations in the semantics of understanding time, without stepping outside rabbinic tradition itself, Ben Tsion Rodeti denies the very fact of change and affirms that everything that has to be known already is included once and for all in the rabbinic literary tradition.