Our Demands: A Ladino Socialist Manifesto

In 1909, a year after he had arrived in Thessaloniki (Salonika), Abraham Benaroya founded the Workers’ Socialist Federation of Salonika. Within the Ottoman Empire, the organization promoted the aims of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which promised a change from monarchy to a constitutional government. The workers called for universal suffrage, a secular government, and freedom of the press, and also demanded eight-hour workdays, an end to child labor, and the right to strike.  

Significantly, the workers’ federation’s agenda encouraged ethnic groups (including Greeks, Turks, and Jews) to write in their own languages while organizing laborers under one banner. “Our Demands: A Ladino Socialist Manifesto,” which Benaroya published in 1911, deliberately used colloquial idioms, expressing its anti-capitalist message in Ladino terms familiar to the Jewish working class.  

Following the publication of the manifesto, the Ottoman government banned the Socialist Workers’ Federation and closed down the Ladino newspaper La Solidaridad Obrera. A year later, Thessaloniki came under Greek rule, under which Banaroya continued to promote socialist demands.