Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

Ḥayyim Mordechai Labaton, son of Rabbi Ḥalfon and Luna Labaton, was born in Aleppo around the year 1780. He engaged in the soap trade to support himself. For many years, he served as deputy to Chief Rabbi Abraham ʿAntebi. Their joint tenure was marked by stability and by efforts to strengthen the standing and authority of the rabbinical court ( bet din), because in the aftermath of the Ottoman reforms (Tanzimat), which left only matters of personal status under its jurisdiction, the court had been somewhat undermined. Their Torah scholarship, the popular belief …

Simon ben Labi (Lavi; d. ca. 1585) was a noted kabbalist in sixteenth-century Morocco and Libya. Born into a family of Spanish exiles,  Labi was active in Fez during the first half of the sixteenth century. Around 1549, he set out for the Land of Israel, but on  arriving in Tripoli he decided to settle there permanently after taking note of its great potential as a site for…

La Boz de Izmir (The Voice of Izmir) was a Judeo-Spanish political and literary weekly published in Izmir (Smyrna) from 1910 to 1922. Printed in Rashi script, it began under the editorship of Bekhor Ḥannah, who also edited the journal Bayram (The Feast), but from 1916/1917 until 1918/1919, he was replaced by B. Luria. Ḥannah had worked for many years as a clerk for the Austrian Post in Izmir, and later for the Ottoman Post after the Capitulations were abolished. Ḥannah produced La Boz de Izmir with the assistance of Jacques (Ya‘aqov) Ben-Senior, who also wrote for several other Judeo…

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La Boz del Puevlo (The Voice of the People) was a Ladino newspaper published by Joseph Romano in Izmir (Smyrna) from 1908 to around 1919. In 1910, its editor-in-chief was Efraim Suhami, and its assistant director was Behor Hana, also of La Boz de Izmir (1910–1922). The paper initially appeared twice a week and later became a weekly. It ranged from four to six pages at different times. Romano, a graduate of an Alliance Israélite Universelle school, believed he had a duty to “regenerate” the Jewish community. His paper instructed readers on everything from proper …

La Buena Esperansa (The Good Hope) was the name under which the first Ladino newspaper was to be published in Izmir in the summer of 1842. All the evidence suggests, however, that the project never saw light. Information in contemporaneous local and European papers testifies to the existence only of its prospectus, dated May 21, 1842. The goal of La Buena Esperansa was “to elevate the Jewish character by exciting Israelites to the cultivation of the liberal arts and sciences” ( Voice of Jacob, July 8, 1842). It was intended to be a weekly and promised to report commercial news…

La Buena Esperansa (The Good Hope), also known as La Esperansa, published from 1874 to 1917 (?) by Aron d…

see Judeo-Spanish Literature Norman A. Stillman

La Epoka (1875–1911) was a Ladino newspaper published in Salonica. It was founded by Bezalel Saadi Halevy. In 1898 his son, Samuel Saadi Halevy (Sam Lévy), became its editor-in-chief. The paper started  as a weekly, later became a bi-weekly, and eventually appeared five times per week, ranging from four to eight pages in different periods. It defined itself as a “political, economic and literary” publication and had a French counterpart,  Le Journal de Salonique, also run by members of the Halevy family. Between 1907 and 1908, it had a weekly supplement, La Epoka Literaria. La Epo…

see La Buena Esperansa, Izmir, 1874-1917, La Buena Esperansa, Izmir, 1842 Norman A. Stillman

La Gazette d’Israël was a two- to four-page weekly newspaper in Tunis published from October 1938 to July 1939 with a circulation of two thousand, and from December 1945 to September 1951 with a circulation of fifteen hundred. (Like all such journals, its readership far exceeded its circulation numbers.) An organ of Revisionist Zionism, it was founded by E. Ganem to fill the gap left by the closing of Le Réveil Juif and Kadima, and was managed consecutively by David Boccara, Raymond Cohen, Victor Haouzi, and André Scemmama. Its editors-in-chief were Henri Emmanuel an…

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The Tunisian Jewish newspaper La Justice called for the extension of French jurisdiction, citizenship, and power in Tunisia. Its political opponents attacked the paper as a platform of the “assimilation party.” Founded in Tunis in 1907 by Mardochée Smadja, La Justice was named in homage to Georges Clémenceau and his campaign in favor of Alfred Dreyfus. The newspaper’s subtitle was: “journal for the extension of France’s rights and duties in Tunisia.” It called on the French to naturalize the Jews of Tunisia or at least to place them under the jurisdiction of French courts. With the outbr…

Dr. Iraj Lalehzari was an Iranian Jewish research scientist in chemistry and pharmacology. Born in 1930, he obtained a doctorate in pharmacology at the age of twenty-one from Tehran University and a second doctorate in organic chemistry in Paris in 1953, where he remained for post-doctoral studies. He returned to Iran in 1958 as professor of chemistry at the University of Tehran, becoming chairman of the department in 1970. In 1973, he was promoted to dean of the College of Pharmacology. In 1975…

La Luz de Israel (The Light of Israel; Istanbul, 1853–?) was a Judeo-Spanish weekly gazette in Istanbul, printed in Rashi script and edited by Léon de Ḥayyim Castro, a member of the Italian Castro family. Founded in 1853, and also known as Or Yisraʾel (The Light of Israel), the paper followed the first major Jewish newspaper to appear in Istanbul, the Journal Israélite (1841–1860). It was devoted primarily to news and reportage on the Crimean War. According to Moïse Franco, Castro owned a printing press and began issuing the paper in 1853 to capitalize on Jewish readers’ …

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The Laniado family probably arrived in the Ottoman Empire soon after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. Rabbis from the family appear to have played a central role in Aleppo in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for they are frequently mentioned and quoted by other scholars throughout this period. Most of what information there is about the lives and official positions of the Laniado rabbis, however, is derived from works by members of the family and therefore is of questionable reliability. This applies most especial…

Aaron ben Isaac Lapapa (ca. 1604–1667) was a highly regarded rabbi who led the Jewish community of Manisa for many years and then moved to Izmir to share the post of chief rabbi with Ḥayyim ben Israel Benveniste. He was one of the few rabbis in Izmir to oppose Shabbetay Ṣevi. Lapapa was born and grew up in Manisa. He studied at the yeshiva of Abraham Muṭal and under Ḥayyim ben Shabbetay (ca. 1555–1647) in Salonica, then went to Istanbul to study under Joseph ben Moses Miṭrani (Mahariṭ, 1569–1639), who often praised him. Lapapa was already considered an important scholar by the time he returned to Manisa, where he married the daughter of Solomon Nissi…

The town of Larache (Ar. al-ʿArāʾish) is located on the Atlantic coast of Morocco at the mouth of the river Loukkos (Oued Loukkos), near the ancient town of Lixus, where legend places the Garden of the Hesperides. The fir…

Abraham Isaac Laredo (1895–1969) was a leader of the Jewish community of Tangier, serving as secretary and vice-president of the Junta (Jewish Community Council) in 1949 and as its president in 1956. Laredo was active in many communal organizations, including the Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Tanger, the Ligue Anti-Tuberculeuse Entraide National, and the Association pour la Défense des Intérêts de Tanger, and served…