The Two Voyages of Gulliver

This rewriting of Jonathan Swift’s novel produced by a well-known Sephardic journalist, Alexandre Benghiat, first appeared in Izmir, Turkey in serialized form and was subsequently published as a book in 1903 or 1904 in Jerusalem. It is a twenty-page summary of the first two parts of Gulliver’s Travels. Benghiat adapted Swift’s novel and transformed its message by means of additions, deletions, and other modifications aimed at making the story comprehensible, amusing, and educational for Sephardic readers of all ages. Thus, Gulliver’s account of his praying in a wooden box on the way to the sea depths, as well as an earlier mention of a whale added by Benghiat, is an obvious allusion to the Book of Jonah and is intended to serve as a moral lesson. The Two Voyages is one of the most skillful Ladino adaptations of European fiction.