Avraam benaroya biography for kids
Albert Benaroya
405 benaroya, albert chusetts. His three sons also became academ- School in Istanbul; he also taught French at the ics. Seth Gabriel Benardete (1930–2001) was a prestigious Lycée Galatasaray in Istanbul. classicist and philosopher who taught at New During his time in Damascus, Benaroya York University and the New School; José developed a system of Turkish stenography Amado Benardete is a well-known philosopher based upon two French systems. In 1917, at Syracuse University; and Diego Benardete is the Ministry of Public Instruction adopted his a professor of mathematics at the University of system and appointed him professor of stenog- Hartford. raphy at the École des Hautes Études Commer- ciales (Yüksek Ticaret Mektebi). After the Bibliography proclamation of the Turkish Republic, the Ben-Ur, Aviva. “Embracing the Hispanic: Jews, Puerto Grand National Assembly (parliament) in Ricans, and Spaniards in Immigrant New York → Ankara invited him to teach the first group (1880–1950).” In Studies in Honor of Denah Lida, of state stenographers (1925). Benaroya orga- ed. Lanin Gyurko and Mary G. Berg. (Potomac, nized and supervised a group of twelve young Maryland: Scripta Humanistica, 2005), 403–413. women (nine of them Jews) who recorded the Benardete, Maír José. Hispanic Culture and Character minutes of the First Balkan Conference, which of the Sephardic Jews (New York: Hispanic Institute, 1953). met in Istanbul in October 1931. However, ———. “Los Romances Judeo-Españoles en Nueva credit for his stenographic system went largely York” (M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1923). to a Turk, a fact of life that Benaroya accepted. Ben-Ur, Aviva. Interview with Diego Benardete, March Also while in Damascus, Benaroya collabo- 20, 2007. rated with Captain Mehmet Necip on a reader Besso, Henry V., to Maír José Benardete, February 29, entitled Lectures patriotiques for use in military 1936. In Henry V. Besso collection, American Sep- schools. He included several of Avraam Eliezer Benaroya was a Jewish socialist, member of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Broad Socialists), later leader of the Socialist Workers’ Federation in the Ottoman Empire. Benaroya played a key role in the foundation of the Communist Party of Greece in 1918. Early years Benaroya was born to a Sephardi Jew in Bulgaria. He was raised in Vidin by a family of small merchants. A polyglot, Benaroya learned to speak six languages fluently. He studied at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, but did not graduate, becoming rather a teacher in Plovdiv. Here Benaroya became a member of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party (Broad Socialists) and published in Bulgarian his work The Jewish Question and Social Democracy. After the Young Turk revolution of 1908 he moved as a socialist organizer to Thessaloniki. He founded here a group called Sephardic Circle of Socialist Studies and was in connection to the Bulgarian left-wing faction, close to the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), called People’s Federative Party (Bulgarian Section). as well as to some Bulgarian socialists, who worked there. Benaroya’s influence grew, as he argued that any socialist movement in the city must take the form of a federation in which all national groups could participate. Due to the Bulgarian roots of its Jewish founder, the organization was viewed with suspicion by the Young Turks and later by the Greek government, as being close to the IMRO and Bulgarian socialist movement. The Fédération Socialiste Ouvrière Idealistic and pragmatist at the same time, in Thessaloniki he played a leading role in the creation, in 1909, of the mainly Jewish Socialist Workers’ Federation, or in Ladino, Federacion. The organization took this name because, built on the federative model of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, it was conceived as a fed On May 17th, 1979, a standard death notice appeared in Maariv, the mass-circulation Israeli daily. "We are heartbroken to announce the death of our beloved husband, father, brother, and grandfather Avraam Benaroya," it said. Signed: the bereaved family. The headstone, erected 30 days later above his resting place at the Holon municipal cemetery, was no less unobtrusive. Surrounded by other Balkan-born late residents of the working-class town, nothing would suggest that Benaroya, now dead at 92, was ever more than the ordinary Bulgarian-born, Holocaust-surviving corner shop owner he was known to be in his latter days. Few, if any, realized that he had been the founder of the Socialist Worker's party of Greece, the predecessor of Greece's Communist Party. BENAROYA, AVRAM (1888–1955), journalist and first teacher of stenography in Turkey. Born in Edirne, Benaroya studied in the Ecole Normale Israélite in Paris. His first teaching position was in Hasköy, Istanbul, and then in Damascus. From 1911 he taught French and stenography at the Turkish Lycée Galatasaray and the High School of Commerce. His stenography method was adopted by the Ministry of Education. In 1925 the Ministry of Commerce decided to introduce stenography in the commercial schools and Benaroya was responsible for the curriculum. In 1928 Benaroya started working as a stenography teacher in the Turkish Parliament. His journalistic career began in Le Jeune Turc. Later he wrote in Ikdam, Stamboul, La République, and Le Journal d'Orient. In 1948 he started publishing L'Etoile du Levant, a weekly newspaper in French which appeared until shortly after his death. His books include: Basit ve Vatani Kıraat: Lectures Patriotiques Faciles (1916), Türkçe Lisanına Mahsûs Stenografya Usûlü, Istanbul (1918), Türkçe'ye Mahsûs Stenografya Usûlü (1929), Istenografi Esas Kuralları ve Kısaltmalar Ders 1–2 (1943), İstenografi: Esas Kurallar ve Kısaltmalar (12 ders) (1944), Istenografi Dersleri (1947). R.N. Bali, Un Journaliste et un Journal méconnu: Avram Benaroya et L'Etoile du Levant (2004). [Rifat Bali (2 ed.)] Encyclopaedia JudaicaSephardic personalities: Avraam Eliezer Benaroya (1887 – 1979)
A fish out of water in the post-Ottoman world, Benaroya outlived his moment of glory by several decades. He came of age at the turn of the 20th century, when the Ottoman Empire was making its first foray into political modernity, a process cut short imminently thereafter, with the collapse of the Empire following its defeat in the First World War.
Just like many other of his compatriots, as a young man Benaroya left his hometown in the newly independent Bulgaria. His destination was Salonica (Thessaloniki), today's Greece's second-largest city, then still a major Ottoman port city; and, in the immediate wake of the 1908 Young Turks Revolution of which it was the epicenter, a fertile ground for progressive politics. "Bulgaria was a hub of socialism in the Balkans," says Dr Paris Papamichos-Chronakis, a historian of Modern Greek and Mediterranean Jewish History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Benaroya, imbued with it, had big plans. The industrial city, with its sizable working-class population, was an ideal location for a skillful political organizer brimming with revolutionary zeal. A large proportion of Salonica's proletariat-in-waiting was either Jewish or Bulgarian, or both. For Benaroya, it imm Benaroya, Avram
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