Böcker av Olga Borovaya

"The Rhodes blood libel of 1840, an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence, was initiated by the island's governor in collusion with Levantine merchants, who charged the local Jewish community with murdering a Christian boy for ritual purposes. An episode in the shared histories of Ottomans and Jews, it was forgotten by the former and, even if remembered, misunderstood by the latter. The 1840 Rhodes Blood Libel aims to restore the place of this event in Sephardi and Ottoman history. Based on newly discovered Ottoman and Jewish sources it argues that the acquittal of Rhodian Jews is adequately understood only in the context of the Tanzimat and the Sublime Porte's foreign relations. Contrary to the common view that Ottoman Jews did not experience the impact of the Tanzimat reforms until the mid-1850s, this study shows that their effects were felt as early as 1840. Furthermore, this book offers a window onto life and intercommunal relations in the Eastern Mediterranean during the late Ottoman era"--

Moses Almosnino (1518-1580), arguably the most famous Ottoman Sephardi writer and the only one who was known in Europe to both Jews and Christians, became renowned for his vernacular books that were admired by Ladino readers across many generations. While Almosnino's works were written in a style similar to contemporaneous Castilian, Olga Borovaya makes a strong argument for including them in the corpus of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) literature. Borovaya suggests that the history of Ladino literature begins at least 200 years earlier than previously believed and that Ladino, like most other languages, had more than one functional style. With careful historical work, Borovaya establishes a new framework for thinking about Ladino language and literature and the early history of European print culture.