La segunda Ester: A Ladino Version of a Polish Legend about Esterka

The modern Sephardi literature is primarily based on translations or adaptations of Western novels. However, there are also some works that deal with the ways of life and the habits of Ashkenazi Jews in the diaspora describing the experiences of Judaism in Central Europe and its relations with the Christian world. One such example is La segunda Ester, a short historical story consisting of 40 pages printed in Rashi script that has not been studied yet. It is about a chapbook brought out in Jerusalem in 1905 by the Shayish Publishing House. On the cover beneath the title there is a note saying: revisto i korijado por Shlomo Israel Sherezlí (revised and corrected by Shlomo Israel Sherezli), who is probably the translator and the author of this adaptation. The action of La segunda Ester takes place in Cracow (Poland) and it’s a Sephardi version of a Polish legend about Esterka, the Jewish lover of King Casimir III the Great. It is important to note that the Ladino version is a translation of the Hebrew novel Meguillat Ester hasheniya which was adapted from German to Hebrew by Yitshac ben Moshe Rumsh and published in Vilnius in 1883. It is worth mentioning that it’s an example of the German Jewish historical novel that aims to narrate the history of the Jewish people and to educate the readers pointing out the moral values of Judaism.

The goal of my lecture is to present the results of the comparative linguistic and literary study of the short story entitled La segunda Ester and to compare the Ladino adaptation with Rumsch`s Hebrew version, on which the Sephardi author based his work. In the transcription from Hebrew Rashi to Latin letters I followed the system of the journal Aki Yerushalayim with some slight modifications.