LEVY, SAM SAADI

LEVY, SAM SAADI (1870–1959), journalist. Levy was born in salonika , but at an early age he went to live in Paris, returning in 1898 to Salonika, where he collaborated in the periodicals La Epoca (Judeo-Spanish), founded in 1875, and Journal de Salonique (French), founded in 1895. He also wrote and edited the most brilliant part of the satirical El Kirbatch ("The Riding Whip"), which was very popular with the public. In 1905, wishing to escape all censorship, he settled in Zemlin (Austria) where he founded two periodicals, Le Rayon (French) and El Luzero (Judeo-Spanish), both intended to be circulated in Turkey. With the Young Turk revolution of 1908, he returned to Salonika, again taking up the editorship of La Epoca and Journal de Salonique. In 1912, with the Hellenization of northern Greece, he sold his newspapers. He then settled first in Lausanne, and later on in Paris, where he set up the Guide Sam, a publication which for years constituted the directory of all industrial and commercial enterprises in the Near East. In Paris, he also founded the Cahiers Sefardis, in which many historical, social, and economic studies on the Jewish communities of the Near East were published. (Joseph Neipris)