Memories of the Meldar: An Ottoman Jew’s Early Education

Aleksander Benghiat (Ben Giat or Ghiat) was born in Ottoman Izmir (Smyrna), where he spent almost all his life. He began his studies in a meldar (traditional Jewish elementary school) before attending an Alliance Israélite Universelle school. He published several Ladino periodicals in Izmir, including his weekly (later daily) El Meseret (The Joy, 1897–1922), which had, at different times, four literary supplements. Benghiat saw himself as an educator of the poor and “ignorant” Sephardic masses. He belonged to a generation of young intellectuals seeking to advance the modernization of Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire. In addition to producing his own works, he was a prolific rewriter of European literature. Among the works he produced and published in serialized form were Ladino versions of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie, and about three dozen other novels that were available to him in French or Hebrew.