With letters and photos from Jews in early-1900s Turkey, Morocco, Palestine, Austria and Romania

In 1903, four centuries after Spain expelled the Jews, a Spanish senator launched a campaign to have his country reopen relations with their descendants, the Sephardic Jews. To promote the campaign, he wrote this classic book, now available in a new annotated translation.

Eager to let Jews speak for themselves, he devoted a third of the book to photos and letters from Sephardim in different countries, in which they describe their communities, synagogues, schools, families, literature and aspirations

They also wrote to him about Ladino—the Judeo-Spanish language that many of them still used at home and in worship. The book documents Sephardic life at a turning point: the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when many young Sephardim were starting to reject the Spanish language that their ancestors had passed down from generation to generation since 1492.

Senator Pulido’s writings, lectures and organizing earned him the nickname “the Apostle of the Sephardic Jews.” His books on this topic continue to be cited frequently by scholars of Sephardic history.