Cazes_translation_Uncle-Ezra-and-His-Wife-Benuta

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Part of Uncle Ezra and His Wife Benuta

Translation

Moshe Cazes, “Uncle Ezra and his Wife Benuta,”1 1939. Translated by Marina Mayorski

- Ezra:

				
	I will tell of wisdom, 
	Sweet for all creations, 
	I will raise turrets, 
	To set the passersby aright…!2

- Benuta: Ezra, drink the coffee. Why did you get me up on my feet like a pheasant? - Ezra: So that you hear the Law a little bit. - Benuta: Wasn’t reading the entire night at the meldado3 enough for you? - Ezra: What I read at night in the meldado is not called Azarod (Azharot)4. And if I’m reading it to you, it is for you to understand the greatness of this holiday.5 - Benuta: What can I understand when you’re reading in Arabic. What is the meaning of, “I will tell of wisdom, sweet for all creations, I will raise turrets, to set the passersby aright”? - Ezra: Do you see why I tell you that you don’t even have a small amount of Judaism left in you. Remember when you got mad at me for reading a pasuk at the table? Now you have woken up all of the cucumber vendors. You don’t know what is the meaning of “I will tell the benignancy of Him Who Shall Not be Named,” which is sweet for all that is created in this world. We need to climb the turrets of the walls or on the White Tower, to tell it to all the passersby.6 - Benuta: That’s what it means? - Ezra: Yes. - Benuta: And for that you started screaming at seven in the damn morning to wake up the whole neighborhood? - Ezra: Yes, so that they hear the wonders of these words:

	I extricated you,
	I forewarned you,
	I guided you,
	In righteous paths.7

- Benuta: Ezra dearest, the people are asleep. I didn’t live in this world nor come to it, what business do you think I have with the whole world now? Don’t you know that we are no longer uncouth common folk like potters at the market? Do you think we’re living in the town square now? - Ezra: Wherever we may live, there God blessed He be we will see us and will listen to us. […]

  1. Bunis, Voices from Jewish Salonika, 437–8 (no. 36). Trans. Marina Mayorski. ↩
  2. Translated from the Ladino version of the Azharot. Hebrew original: אספר תושיות / מתוקות לפיות / ואציב תלפיות / לישר העוברים. For an English translation of the Hebrew original, see: Rabbi Shimon Ben Zemach Duran, Zohar Harakia, trans. Philip J. Caplan (Lanham MD, 2012). ↩
  3. The Meldado is the study group or forum for religious Jewish learning in the Sepahrdi world. See: Matthias B. Lehman, Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture (Bloomington IN, 2005), 78–84.  ↩
  4. Azharot is one of only two known long poems by Ibn Gabirol, a versification of the 613 precepts that comprise the Jewish law, presumably written in his early youth. Ezra originally sang the Azharot in Ladino, probably using an eighteenth-century translation that had since become outdated; this explains why Benuta was unable to understand their content. ↩
  5. Shavuot. ↩
  6. Salonika’s White Tower, known in Ladino as Beáz Kulé (from Turkish) or Kuli Blanka, is a well-known city landmark residing on its waterfront. It was constructed after the Ottoman capture of the city in 1430, replacing an older Byzantine fortification. ↩
  7. Hebrew original: אני הוצאתיך / אני היזהרתיך / אני הידרכתיך / בדרכי מישרים. ↩

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Cazes_translation_Uncle-Ezra-and-His-Wife-Benuta