In the latter part of the 19th century, Jewish schools in what are now Greece and Turkey began using simple textbooks to teach pupils to read and write in Ladino, an approach that differed both from the traditional method of teaching only Hebrew (on the assumption that children would learn Ladino, written in Hebrew characters, on their own) and the more modern emphasis on learning French, the language of European culture. Sarah Zaides explains the surprising origin of these textbooks:

On December 20, a Palestinian waited in a wooded area near a Jewish village in northern Israel in the hope of encountering a victim. Soon enough he spotted Esther Horgan walking home from an evening jog and killed her by beating her with a rock. He later told the police that he did the deed to avenge the death of Kamal Abu Wa’er, a terrorist in Israeli custody. Itamar Marcus explains: