Scienceאליעזר פאפו

Eliezer Papo

Eliezer Papo is a scholar of Ladino culture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and served as rabbi of the Jewish communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina until 2024.

born 1969Research on Ladino cultureSephardic parodies of the HaggadahRabbi of Bosnian Jewish communities

Born: 25 April 1969, Sarajevo
Occupation: folklorist, senior lecturer, Chief Rabbi, writer
Education: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, University of Sarajevo, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Eliezer Papo was born in 1969 in Sarajevo

Eliezer Papo was born on April 25, 1969, in Sarajevo, then part of Yugoslavia. He grew up there and earned a bachelor's degree from the law faculty of the University of Sarajevo. As a young man he became religiously observant, and through this he discovered Ladino literature.

In 1991 he moved to Israel and studied at a Sephardic yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem. He earned a master's degree at the Hebrew University, writing on the plays of Laura Papo. In 2008 he received a doctorate from Ben-Gurion University for a study of Sephardic Jewish parodies of the Passover Haggadah.

From 1997 to 2024 he served as rabbi of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He became a lecturer in Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University in 2010 and a senior lecturer in 2016, when he also began heading its Gaon Center for Ladino Culture. His research covers Sephardic culture, folklore and the Ladino language, and he has written novels in Ladino and Serbo-Croatian.

Since 2018 he has headed the international Society for Sephardic Studies. In 2020 he joined the council of the National Authority for Ladino Culture and became a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy. In 2025 he was appointed chairman of the National Authority for Ladino Culture. He lives in Jerusalem.