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There are behind-the-scenes activities within research libraries that are often overlooked in the course of everyday library usage, yet which can make a significant contribution to teaching and scholarly research. Stanford University Libraries' conservation laboratory is in such a category. Its work is of crucial importance for students and faculty at Stanford and for the wider scholarly community. My students and I are particularly pleased by the lab's preservation of the rare Ladino newspaper El Dia from Philippopolis (Plovdiv), Bulgaria. This is a unique periodical that is not available anywhere else in the United States. Its preservation and microfilming is making it finally available for research.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries newspapers played a positively critical role as messengers of modernity to their reading publics. This was especially true for newspapers in the Judeo-Spanish vernacular-Ladino-that addressed themselves to the Sephardic Jews whose communities were scattered throughout the Ottoman Empire and neighboring countries on the Balkan Peninsula.
Relatively few books were published in Ladino, and thus newspapers like the weekly El Dia occupied a central position in the print culture of Sephardic Jews. The press became the indispensable standard-bearer of modern European and Jewish culture alike. Indeed, El Dia is a good representative example of the Ladino newspapers of its era. As one might expect, this "independent Jewish organ" (from its subtitle) covered local and international news events. In addition, like other newspapers in Ladino, it ran serialized novels (feuilletons) and translations from contemporary European literature. El Dia aligned itself with the nascent Zionist movement, and in that respect enhanced its readers' awareness of political developments affecting Jews the world over.
As a result of the wars, conflagrations, revolutions, massacres, and geographical displacements of the past century, it is unusual to encounter extensive sets of newspapers in Ladino. Stanford is fortunate indeed to have been able to acquire this decade-long run of El Dia, covering the years 1898 to 1907.
Because the Ladino press was so important to the public that it served, I have encouraged the library to build up its collections in this area. For some years now, faculty, graduate students and research fellows at Stanford have made extensive use of these materials, and El Dia is a particularly timely and welcome addition to the library's holdings. I well understand how common it is for 100-year-old newspapers to be in a precarious physical state, and that steps must be taken to conserve them if they are to be made available to today's readers.
That helps to explain why I am most encouraged by this excellent achievement. I am hopeful that similar tasks will be undertaken in the future and that material that would otherwise be lost because of deterioration will be saved for posterity. I wish to convey my thanks and appreciation to the staff of the conservation lab.
Aron Rodrigue
Aron Rodrigue is professor of History, Eva Chernov Lokey Professor in Jewish Studies at Stanford University and the chair of the department of History. He received his PhD from Harvard. His research interests include modern Jewish history; the history and culture of Sephardic Jews; the Jews of modern France; and minority identities. His books include Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th-20th Centuries (with Esther Benbassa). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; Images of Sephardi and Eastern Jewries in Transition, 1860-1939: The Teachers of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993; (edited catalog with introduction) Guide to Ladino Materials in the Harvard College Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College Library, 1992; and French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1990. Rodrigue was the Ina Levine Senior Scholar in Residence at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2003-2004, and received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 1998-99; a Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship, 1998-99; and a National Jewish Book Council Honor Award in Sephardic Studies, 1994. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research.
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