Special Ladino Day Edition: Learning Ladino in Istanbul, Singing Haketia in Morocco, Traveling from Salonica, & Moses Salio de Misrayim

10 January 2020

In Memory of Daniele Myara, A”H, beloved husband, author, linguist, and fashion stylist.

Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one.

Feature ◊ Upcoming Events ◊ Sephardi Gifts ◊ Donate ◊ Archive

The Sephardi World Weekly is made possible by generous readers like you. Now there is a new way to show your support. Become a Patron of the Sephardi World Weekly via Patreon and your name will appear in each edition along with timely, thought-provoking articles on Greater Sephardi history, the arts, and current affairs. Thanking you in advance! And thank you to Sephardi World Weekly Patrons Maria Gabriela Borrego Medina and Gwen Zuares!

“Interview: Vanessa Paloma Elbaz”
By Jessica Duchen, The Jewish Chronicle

Celebrated by the New York Times as a “one-woman roving museum,” and recipient of the American Sephardi Federation’s Broome & Allen Fellowship as well as the ASF-Association Mimouna inaugural Florence Amzallag Tatistcheff, A”H Award, Dr. Vanessa Paloma Duncan-Elbaz is not only a Casablanca & Cambridge-based scholar, musician, and vocalist, but also “a remarkable mix of writer, performer, anthropologist and cultural diplomat.” Deploying her many talents in exploring “music and politics in the Mahgreb, the Moroccan Jewish community[,] and Judeo-Muslim relations,” Duncan-Elbaz is especially attuned to the power of music to touch her listeners: “‘In Jerusalem 20 years ago, someone in the ministry of culture said to me: ‘Why do you sing?’ And I said, ‘I want to change people when I sing.’ It’s about touching them in a deep way that will evoke something they recognise of their own experience.’”

Dr. Vanessa Paloma Duncan-Elbaz was honored at the Uncommon Commonalities: Jews and Muslims of Morocco Conference with the ASF and Association Mimouna’s Florence Amzallag-Tatistcheff, A”H, Award in recognition of her contributions to scholarship, the Moroccan Jewish community, and co-existence, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, Center for Jewish History, 18 June 2019
(Photo courtesy of Zakaria Siraj)

Special Feature: Vanessa Paloma Elbaz Sings “Moses Salio de Misrayim”

Dr, Vanessa Paloma Duncan-Elbaz, Jewish Museum of Casablanca, Morocco, 2009
(Screenshot courtesy of YouTube)

Dr. Vanessa Paloma Duncan-Elbaz sings Moses Salio de Misrayim (“Moses Escaped from Egypt”), a traditional Northern Moroccan Judeo-Spanish (Haketia or Moroccan Ladino) song. The video was filmed at the Jewish Museum of Casablanca, Morocco, the only Jewish museum in North Africa country.

Karen Gerson Sarhon, Editor of the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) El Amaneser monthly, speaking on “Sephardic Humor and the Ladino Language,” at the Polyglot Conference, Thessaloniki, Greece, 30 October 2016
(Photo courtesy of the Polyglot Conference/Youtube)

“Istanbul Jews fight to save their ancestral dialect”
Daily Sabah

Ladino, a luscious linguistic mix of “medieval Castilian and Hebrew, with sprinklings of Turkish, Arabic and Greek,” is nearing extinction. Not a particularly useful language—UNESCO estimates that 100,000 Judeo-Spanish speakers remain in the world—a handful of dedicated Turkish Jews have led a mini Ladino revival, animated principally by the desire to preserve a living link to their Judeo-Spanish heritage. Explains a thirty-year old Turkish Jew who recently began learning Ladino: “‘A big part of who we are, a great culture and a great language, will disappear if we lose Jewish-Spanish.’”

“An intimate chronicle of Sephardic Jewish history”
The Economist

The Economist trumpets Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey through the Twentieth Century as “a remarkable book.” Written with the “depth and feeling of a novelist,” and utilizing “photographs and birth certificates… medical records and passports” to flesh out her story, Stein meticulously follows and reconstructs the lives and various lines of a “prominent Sephardic family through interwar Greece and the Holocaust to the contemporary diaspora.”

Order a copy of Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century now from The ASF’s Sephardi Shop!

Dr. Sarah Abrevaya Stein. Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardi Studies & Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA
(Photo courtesy of UCLA)

Sephardi Gifts:

The Historic Synagogues Of Turkey / Turkiye'nin Tarihi Sinagoglari
(In Turkish and English)
by Joel A. Zack
Photographs by Devon Jarvis

This project testifies to a historic Jewish community of vibrancy and dynamism that once dotted Turkey. Dating back to Roman and Byzantine times, Jews thrived on Turkish soil, finding refuge in the tens of thousands after their expulsions from Spain, Portugal, and Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Joel Zack and his team have performed an important cultural service, retrieving for posterity rich testimony of the Jewish architectural heritage in Ottoman and modern Turkish History.

Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century
by Sarah Abrevaya Stein

An award-winning historian shares the true story of a frayed and diasporic Sephardic Jewish family preserved in thousands of letters

For centuries, the bustling port city of Salonica was home to the sprawling Levy family. As leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. The wars of the twentieth century, however, redrew the borders around them, in the process transforming the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree.

In Family Papers, Sephardic historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein uses the family’s correspondence to tell the story of their journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe. They wrote to share grief and to reveal secrets, to propose marriage and to plan for divorce, to maintain connection. They wrote because they were family. And years after they frayed, Stein discovers, what remains solid is the fragile tissue that once held them together: neither blood nor belief, but papers.

With meticulous research and care, Stein uses the Levys' letters to tell not only their history, but the history of Sephardic Jews in the twentieth century.

“Like” ASF on Facebook to keep up-to-date on our projects, programs, and publications, as well as to share your thoughts

Upcoming Events or Opportunities:

The American Sephardi Federation, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, and the Sephardic Home for the Aged Foundation present:

International Ladino Day:
A Celebration of Story and Song

Sunday, 12 January at 2:00PM
Auditorium Seating - SOLD OUT!
Simulcast Presentation - Limited Seats Available

Please register here

~Sponsorship Opportunities Available: Email or Call (212.294.8350) Yves Seban ~

Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street
New York City

Come celebrate Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish, with acclaimed scholars and musicians. Hear Prof. Gloria Ascher, who has taught courses in Ladino at Tufts University for 17 years; Prof. Dina Danon, whose new book brings Izmir's Ottoman Jewish community to life; two scenes from a New York Ladino play; a panel of Generation Y and Z Ladino enthusiasts; and musicians dear to our hearts, The Elias Ladino Ensemble and Sarah Aroeste.

Since 2013, International Ladino Day celebrations have been held around the world. January 12th marks Manhattan's Third Annual Ladino Day created by Prof. Jane Mushabac for the American Sephardi Federation at The Center for Jewish History.

Ladino is a bridge to many cultures. It is a variety of Spanish that has absorbed words and expressions from many languages, most notably Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, Greek, and French. The mother tongue of Jews in the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, Ladino became the home language of Sephardim worldwide. While the number of Ladino speakers has sharply declined, distinguished Ladino Day programs like this one celebrate and preserve a vibrant language and heritage for future generations.

The American Sephardi Federation & Association Mimouna invite you to
The 2nd Jewish Africa Conference & Morocco Trip Extension!

Please click here to apply now
Applications Close on 24 January 2020!

Trip Dates: 23-29 March 2020

Total in-country tour cost: $2,600.00*
(Early Bird offer ends on 15 January 2020)

Total in-country tour cost: $3,200.00*
(Price after 15 January 2020)

HIGHLIGHTS:

•Experience Rabat, Casablanca, Essaouira, and Marrakech with scholars and communities members.

•VIP Access to the 2nd Jewish Africa Conference (23-25 March), featuring African leaders and scholars discussing the role of Jews and the need for Jewish voices in African civil society, the development of Jewish space, perspectives on old and new African Jewish identities, and encounters between Jews and non-Jews in contemporary Africa.

•Explore Moroccan Jewish history, culture, and contemporary life, as well as Mimouna’s pioneering work to perpetuate Morocco’s tradition of tolerance and combat anti-Semitism abroad

*PRICE INCLUDES:

· Welcome & assistance upon arrival at Casablanca’s Mohamed V Airport (Roundtrip airfare NOT included)
· 6 Nights / 7 Days in Five Star Hotels (Double-occupancy; Single rooms available upon request for additional cost)
· In-country tour transportation
· Certified local English speaking tour guide and scholars throughout the whole trip
· Shabbat experience in Marrakech at Slat Lazama, a Sephardic synagogue founded in 1492 by Jewish refugees expelled by the Alhambra Decree
· Entrance fees to monuments
· Kosher breakfasts, lunches, and dinners

~Click here to learn more about the trip, or contact ASF at
212-294-8350
info@americansephardi.org ~

The American Sephardi Federation Presents:

The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival’s (NYSJFF)
23rd Anniversary Edition

SAVE THE DATE
23-29 February 2020!
Please click here to reserve your Festival Passes now!

~ Sponsorship Opportunities Available: Email or Call (212.294.8350) Yves Seban ~

The Philos Project and the American Sephardi Federation present:

Nosotros 3.0: Strengthening Bonds Between Jewish and Latino Communities

On view until May 2020

Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street
New York City

The Philos Project and the American Sephardi Federation cordially invite you to the third edition of our Latin American classic art exhibit: Nosotros 2019.

This years exhibit explores the Judtice of Zionism through the lens of Jewish and Latino national liberation struggles for independence from European colonialism. A new collection of art pieces will be revealed, including pieces from master artists Norma Lithgow and Deyvi Pérez. It will be a night of celebration of the shared history and culture of the Jewish and Latin communities.

Donate now and your tax-deductible contribution will help ASF preserve and promote the Greater Sephardi history, traditions, and culture as an integral part of the Jewish experience!

Copyright © 2019 American Sephardi Federation, All rights reserved.

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The American Sephardi Federation is located at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, New York, New York, 10011).

www.AmericanSephardi.org | info@AmericanSephardi.org | (212) 294-8350

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