Raphael and Miriam

B. ha-Kohen

1910

It was a winter day. The streets of Vienna were dirty and shrouded with the mud of the snows that were falling, only to be melted immediately under the feet of the passersby. A dense and heavy smoke hung over the great city giving it a sad and dark appearance. It was one of those days when the heart of a man unintentionally saddens and is filled…

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This novel portrays the diversity of fin-de-siècle southeastern Europe, a zone between Vienna and Istanbul populated by Sephardim and Ashkenazim alike, not to mention Muslims and Christians of various denominations, ethnicities, and nationalities. The eponymous protagonists move temporarily to Vienna from an unnamed city on the Danube, likely in Bulgaria, a move that was common among many educated Ottoman Sephardim of the period and may have been inspired by the author’s own experience.

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Creator Bio

B. ha-Kohen

19th–20th Century

B. ha-Kohen was an Istanbul-based editor, printer, and author. He may have been the same person as Ben-Yitsḥak Saserdote, a Ladino author who signed his works simply as “Saserdote” (Sacerdote), as both the Spanish sacerdote and Hebrew kohen mean “priest,” though others have identified Saserdote as the pen name of a female author. 

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