Two perceptions of change in Judeo-Spanish rabbinic literature (Sephardic literary and semantic references to understanding the perception of time)

In this article, I analyze the brief references to the invention of the tel egraph in Yeuda Papo's Judeo-Spanish version of the "Pele Yo'ets" and Ben T sion Rodeti's "Sefer Ki Ze Kol ha-Adam", two Judeo-Spanish books of 'musar' from the nineteenth century. These rather unlikely references permit us to study perceptions of present, future, and change held by two Sephardic rab bis from the Ottoman Empire in a period of accelerated technological progre ss and social transformation. Two different attitudes towards change can be described. While Papo's work announces important transformations in the se mantics of understanding time, without stepping outside rabbinic tradition itself, Ben Tsion Rodeti denies the very fact of change and affirms that ev erything that has to be known already is included once and for all in the r abbinic literary tradition.