Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century by Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019; ISBN 9780374-185428; 307 pages including notes, acknowledgments and credits; $28.
SAN DIEGO – One is reminded of the saying “to save life is to save a world” when viewing the family tree of Sa’adi Besalel Ashkenazi a-Levi (1820-1903), who was a publisher during the 19th century in the Ottoman empire city of Salonica, known today as the Greek city of Thessaloniki. He has over 100 descendants spread across nine countries, and that doesn’t count spouses of the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so forth.
Sa’adi, the progenitor of this clan which became known as the Levy family, published the Ladino language La Epoka, and although some rabbis were scandalized by some of the positions he took, he became a well-respected figure in the Jewish community of Salonika.
He paved the way for his son David (1863-1943) to become a ranking official in his city, one who rose in the Ottoman bureaucracy from a passport office director, to an offsite assistant to the sultan, and eventually to the chancellorship of the Jewish kehilla in Salonika.
In his official capacity, Daout Effendi, as David came to be called, was an intermediary when Theodor Herzl wished an audience with the sultan to discuss his efforts to create a Jewish state in the Ottoman Empire’s western province of Palestine. Daout, himself, was no Zionist, considering the ideal future for himself and his fellow Jews to remain loyal Ottomanists.
Daout Effendi’s youngest son, Leon (1891-1978), moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where his fondness for textiles is displayed at the History and Arts Museum.
Another of Sa’adi’s grandchildren, Karsa Salam (son of Sa’adi’s daughter Fortunee) was also an émigré, living in Mumbai, India, for 20 years while working in the field of electrical equipment.. After the company he initially represented was Nazified, Karsa became a British subject.
Other of Sa’adi’s descendants wound up in the United States, Austria, England, France, Portugal, Spain and South Africa.
However, the preponderance of his descendants, including Daout Effendi, were killed during the Holocaust; their names included among the martyrs of our people.
Not all descendants of Sa’adi were so cloaked in honor. A great grandson, Vital Hasson, was executed after World War II following his conviction on charges of collaborating with the Nazis.
Historian Stein said she was surprised to find within the Levy family papers “the tormenting story of a great grandson of Sa’adi who was a documented perpetrator, who was said to carry a whip and wear an SS uniform” as head of occupied Salonica’s Jewish police. Murder, robbery and rape were among the litany of his documented crimes.
While not every member of the Levy family profiled by Stein was extraordinary, their cumulative experiences helped to portray the circumstances by which Jewish families spread throughout the world in their own little diasporas.
The amount of multilingual research that Stein, a professor at UCLA, put into tracing and examining this family’s journey is remarkable. Often when we read biographies, we learn how great and influential people influenced history. This book helps us to understand the reverse: how history impacts the lives of ordinary people. I am certain that many Jewish genealogists wish they could complete for their families a history as detailed and interesting as Stein did for a family that is not even her own.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald. harrison@sdjewishworld.com