Lost in Translation, Found in Transliteration: Books, Censorship, and the Evolution of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation of London as a Linguistic Community, 1663–1810 by Alex Kerner

Abstract

Reviewed by: Lost in Translation, Found in Transliteration: Books, Censorship, and the Evolution of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation of London as a Linguistic Community, 1663–1810 by Alex Kerner David Sclar Alex Kerner . Lost in Translation, Found in Transliteration: Books, Censorship, and the Evolution of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation of London as a Linguistic Community, 1663–1810 . Leiden : Brill , 2018 . 283 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000562 Early modern Jewish communities formed and operated in complex ways. Over centuries of frequent and extensive migration, Jews lived in close proximity with other Jews, established rules of conduct, shared resources, and retained common heritages, memories, and commitments. Yet, spread through disparate cultural contexts, Jewish rituals, traditions, societies, experience, and thought varied greatly. In recent years, scholars have toiled to uncover communal self-fashioning, the function of subcommunities, and the nature of pan-Jewish identity. Alex Kerner's book on the Western Sephardic community of London is a welcome contribution to this broad objective of understanding Jewish communal life in the early modern period. Kerner's innovation is to bring theories of language and cultural translation, typified by Peter Burke's work on early modern Europe, to the Sephardic Jews of London (Shaʿar Hashamayim Congregation). Using archival documents and published pamphlets, Kerner shows how lay leadership (or, the Mahamad) oversaw "written communications (books, pamphlets, administration) and the languages used by the community institutions and members" in a bid to shape and control communal cohesion (13). To Kerner, the wardens of the community, fearing Christian perception and vilification of Jews, sought to anticipate and eliminate potential threats emanating from within. Tying this to earlier trends of confessionalization, Kerner argues that language policies were as strong a force on the community as religion or ethnicity. Kerner divides the book into three parts, each of which includes an introduction. Part 1 details the initial 1664 censorship article, which accompanied the birth of the community, and presents its evolution deep into the nineteenth century. Part 2 discusses various ways in which language played a factor in communal identity and control, particularly in ritual, administration, and publication. Part 3, taking up more than half the book, manifests these theoretical concerns in a chronological narrative of Sephardic publishing and publication attempts in London through the early nineteenth century. In parts 1 and 2, Kerner offers a deep analysis of the censorship bylaw, showing parallels with English Quakers and presenting it as a response to a slew of conversionary tracts published by apostate Ashkenazic Jews in the seventeenth century. He also articulates the two-century evolution of Shaʿar Hashamayim's publication policy: members of the community were banned from engaging in print activity (printing, editing, translating, publishing) without express permission of the Mahamad; initial threats of ḥerem (excommunication) were dropped by 1677 as communal involvement proved increasingly voluntary; frightening sacral punishments gave way to monetary fines by 1733; the 1781 protocols, the first to appear in print, incorporated a rationale for publishing prohibitions; and a copy of the 1784 version included a handwritten English translation alongside the printed Spanish, indicating linguistic shifts. In addition to [End Page 190] demonstrating the correlation between a shrinking community and a weakening Mahamad, Kerner shows how the bylaw controlling local Jewish publication amalgamated Dutch communal policies, Iberian inquisitional cultural heritage, and English censorship policies. In part 3, Kerner analyzes publishing permissions and rejections found in the archives of Shaʿar Hashamayim and offers a bibliographic history of publications issued by English Jews in the eighteenth century. He shows how Hebrew and Spanish, representing the community's dual heritage, were rarely deemed problematic, while English publication almost never received approval. For example, the Mahamad refused the request of Moseh Nieto, son and brother of successive chief rabbis, to publish his English translation of the Hebrew prayer book in 1734, but granted a license for his Spanish translation ( Livro de rezas ). According to Kerner, the Mahamad displayed a leniency toward Spanish, because of the unlikelihood that it "could be used against the interests of the community" (64). Though that assertion raises questions about the Sephardic Diaspora more broadly (Did fear of retribution prevent Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam or Hamburg from publishing...