Eliezer Papo LA MEGILA DE SARAY

and directly without losing either his sense of humor or his
seriousness of purpose for a moment.
Obliged for a time to suspend his rabbinical studies, Eliezer is
about to become a lawyer in the rabbinical courts in Israel, but
university studies in Jewish philosophy beckon, and perhaps he
will resume his course towards the rabbinate. He recently edited
a book in Bosnian on Human Rights in the context of
(Orthodox) Judaism and is now at work on an instructional
Siddur for the Jews who remain in Sarajevo. Yet he has found
the time to immerse himself in the Ladino of his ancestors and
the Sephardi culture of the Balkans.
In the Sephardi tradition, these many different forms of
expression hold within them an unchanging objective divine
instruction. In the Golden Age in Spain the leading Jews were,
at one and the same time, rabbis and philosophers, educators and
interpreters, statesmen and poets, scientists and storytellers. In
their day, this openness to the general society and this diversity
of professions were among the ways in which they showed their
fundamental loyalty to the Torah. So long as they clung to the
authentic unity of their core beliefs, Sephardi Jews could range
to and fro over all aspects of human life without sacrificing their
integrity.
In pursuing in his own person this Sephardi tradition of Ribui
Mitoch Achdoot (Multiplicity within Unity) the author
personifies the very themes he has chosen for this novel.
For the Jews of Sarajevo this unity at the core of many interests
and professions has been dissipated by the assimilation and
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