This paper will argue for the pivotal role played by an emergent social class of professionals in the transformation of Jewish society and communal life during the late Ottoman Empire. Drawing insights from the fields of historical sociology and global history, it will outline the social, cultural, and political roles adopted by Jewish professionals and, in turn, trace the formation of an incipient class identity. To this end, it will focus in particular on the early political journalism of one Abraham Galante (1873-1961) and the network of collaborators/correspondents who assisted in the production of his Cairo-based journal La Vara [“The Staff”] (1905-1908). Galante, best known today for his expansive writings on Ottoman Jewish history, was in his early career a provocative educator-journalist. After clashing with the municipal rabbinic establishment in Izmir over a critical article in the local Ladino press, Galante—like many young Ottoman liberals of his generation—followed the path of exile to Cairo where he could work beyond the reach of Ottoman censors. Drawing on a network of professional colleagues across the Ottoman Mediterranean, he established La Vara as a medium intended to energetically polemicize against Ottoman Chief Rabbi Moshe HaLevi (1827-1910) and those authority figures in Ottoman Jewish communities both large and small who aligned with him and his conservative politics, derisively terming this element as la banda preta [“the black gang”]. This paper will present La Vara and the political project to which it gave voice as a key expression and index of the convictions, grievances, and aspirations of the nascent Ottoman Jewish professional class. Rabbi Moshe HaLevi, who benefited from the patronage and support of Sultan Abdulhamid (1842-1918), was coerced into resignation in late Summer 1908 following the reinstitution of the constitutional regime and the derogation of Abdulhamid’s personal authority. The paper will conclude by following the members of the La Vara network into the early Second Constitutional period (1908-1912) as the Jewish professional class and its associated ideological tendencies claimed the mantle of communal leadership under vastly transformed political conditions.