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MEAM LOEZ GENESIS 2The Torah Anthology The Patriarchs. Yaakov Culi by Aryeh Kaplan
Me’am Lo’ez (Hebrew: מעם לועז), initiated by Rabbi Yaakov Culi in 1730, is a widely studied commentary on the Tanakh written in Judaeo-Spanish. It is perhaps the best known publication in that language.
History
Me’Am Lo’ez marked one of the first major printings of Judaeo-Spanish text in the Ottoman Empire. Following the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, many Sephardi Jews settled in the Ottoman Empire. These Jews bought with them their customs, culture and Judaeo-Spanish language. Hebrew remained the language of ritual, prayer and scholarship, but its comprehension by the Jewish masses had decreased. As time passed, many community leaders became concerned about the intellectual gap between the Jewish masses and their cultural leadership. This led several Jewish scholars to conclude that, in order to bring Judaism to the Jewish masses in the western Ottoman Empire, it should be done in their own language, Judaeo-Spanish, as educated men could read it, and it was written in Hebrew script. This major initiative was launched in 1730 with the printing of the first volume of Me’Am Lo’ez, which was to be a thorough commentary on the Bible in Judaeo-Spanish. The printing of Me’Am Lo’ez marked the emergence of large scale printing activity in Judaeo-Spanish in the western Ottoman Empire in general and in Constantinople in particular