'It's early to declare Ladino dead'
By Yoav SternISTANBUL - It may be the only city in the world that's divided between Asia and Europe. But did you know that it's also the only city in the world that publishes a regular newspaper in Ladino? The weekly Salom, which serves the Jewish population of Turkey, and especially the Jews of this city of 10 million on the Bosphorus, is mostly written in Turkish, but each edition has an entire page of news and articles in Ladino.
Ladino, which is widely known here as "Jewish Spanish," is fighting for its survival. When Salom was founded, in 1947, as part of the broader cultural activities of the Jewish community, it appeared entirely in Ladino, but over the years Turkish has replaced that language. In addition to the weekly page, there is also a monthly magazine in Ladino, which is apart of an effort of the members of Turkey's Jewish community to preserve the language, an effort that also involves many in Israel, Europe and America. But it's only in Turkey that's there a substantial community whose members are united by Ladino.
Turkey's Jewish community numbers approximately 23,000, which makes it, after Iran's, the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. Nonetheless, this large population, which comprises the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, and who were welcomed to the empire by the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II, is aging. The birthrate is dwindling - for every three deaths there is only one new child, and 20 percent of all marriages are mixed.
Many in the Jewish community view the campaign to revive Ladino as one of the important ways to preserve their cultural life. Turkish Jewry is largely secular, something that reduces the importance of Hebrew, the holy tongue. The hope now is that Ladino can become entrenched as the community's third language, after Turkish and English.
Turkish Jews have succeeded in preserving their language for more than 500 years, since the expulsion from Spain. But in the 20th century, Turkish Jewry, like Turkey itself, underwent a tremendous change. The community sought to become part of the citizenry of the new Turkish nation, and to become Turks also in tongue. Toward the late 1940s, the use of Ladino became unacceptable among Jewish youth.
"I could not stand it when my mother spoke to me in Ladino in public," says the editor of Salom, Matilda Levy. "I asked her to speak to me in Turkish, and she did that in a terrible accent."
Karen Gershon Sharhon edits the newspaper's Ladino page and is the moving spirit behind the effort to boost the language. "It is still early to consider Ladino dead," she says, as she sits surrounded by books translated into Ladino and published in Istanbul.
"When I was studying the subject at university, they told me that the language would be dead in 10 years. That was 15 years ago, and in practice what is happening is the opposite," she says.
A few years ago, Sharhon and some of her friends set up a band, Los Pasaros Sepharadis, or the Spanish Birds, to perform Ladino songs, and find they are having great success in attracting audiences. Last year, in cooperation with the Istanbul branch of Institute Cervantes, courses in Ladino and modern Spanish were set up for the Jewish community, and about 80 young members of the community registered and began learning the language.
Members of the younger generation all speak fluent Turkish, of course, but their names are still foreign. According to Levy, people who do not know her think she is a Turkish Muslim, until they hear her name. "They think I am a foreigner, and then I need to explain that I am not. I am a Jewish Turk," she says.
Nationalist elements in Turkey have attacked Jews for their ethnic background.
"This is a new trend," says the deputy head of the Jewish community in Turkey, Lina Filiba. "The nationalists are questioning our Turkishness, even though the fact that we are Turkish is accepted by all others," she adds.
Why Facebook Connect?
Comment on Haaretz.com articles with your Facebook login, and share your thoughts on your own wall.
- Latest
- Most Viewed
- Most Rated
- Open all
Hello, I would like to get in touch with Ms. Matilda Levy. I am organizing an exhibition of books and other printed material in Ladino at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago. My family has about 250 samples such as books, machzorim, sidurim, newspapers and such. I would love to add more items to give this exhibition a more comprehensive approach. I would appreciate it very much if I could get in touch with Ms. Levy to see if it's possible to get a suscription to the Salom newspaper and other items printed in the Ladino language. Any information would be greately appreciated. Best regards, Michael Granados
Hi, Have a look at the following site. But it is written in Turkish. You can access to Ladino pages by searching the site. http://www.salom.com.tr/?PID=2&HID=4290
It is curious for me to know the importance the Jewishes are giving to Ladino and it has part to the history of Diaspora.Ladino is usually put in lists of neolatin languages which are languages of my interest as a speaker of a Romance language that is the Portuguese language spoken and the official language of Angola,Brazil,Guiné-Bissau,Cape Verde,Mozambique,Portugal,Saint Thome and Principe and East Timor in an territorial area of about ten millions km2.I am sincerely sure the jews are welcome to visit and live in our Portuguese speaking countries.
How can we get a copy of this newsletter? On line? or...?? Shabbat Shalom! My grandparents spoke Ladino (b. in Salonika)and my dad and uncle and cousin still do and we are all interested in reading this paper. Thanks.
Im from Panama living in Turkey.I remembered when I lived in Israel my grandpa made me hear from time to time in the radio ladino station, was interesting for me. He use to say " hear hear this is our old spanish". I never heard it,frequently, neither at home as we speak spanish or french. Now I arrived to Turkey, Izmir and was amazing to find this language "alive",lets say...I learned it very quickly! and i use it from time to time with the people of the community..it is very nice! Hope it survives and i think is very important to keep it. there is a big increase in spanish language today and i think ladino has a big important role also...:-)
they call it Espanyol, is it only scholars who use the term Ladino?
Our families were neighbors, well, almost neighbors. My grandparents immigrated from Romania to Cayo Hueso (Key West, Florida) around the beginning of the 1900's. My father was born there. My grandfather had a grocery store, and the frutas (mangos, fruta bomba, etc.) all came from Cuba. Their house was casher, but in the bodega, they sold "lechon" chazer, because that is what the Cubanos ate. If you want to teach the younger generation in Colorado about Ladino, may I suggest that you click on JEWISHMUSIC.COM web-site. A number of the compact-discs allow us to listen to sample songs.
Hi Yaakov Just in case my previous response got lost in the ether, here is my email address again: yparkinson55@gmail.com. Looking forward to hearing from you
Hi Yaakov This is Yvonne. It is so nice to be remembered. I often wonder what has happened to all our friends from those days. My email is yparkinson55@gmail.com and I would love to hear from you, and any other friend from the old days. Do keep in touch
Sorry I didn't know of "Salom" when I was in Istanbul last April. A remnant of our family has preserved Ladino -- it was our first language -- and we are always eager to hear of its survival. (Our parents came from Salonika.) Nochada buena. Lou
Why dont you learn from the Love of Zion expressed in the song you quoted??
I am very happy to see that old jewish culutures are making a come back,it is a welcome addition to world Jewish culutre.jewish communities need to find a rewarding secular cultural alternative to either being religious or being disconnected.The once lively Ladino and Yiddish cultures can help show us how.There is a "third way".Good news indeed!
Judy Frankel In the USA and Marlene Samoun in France are two artists who recorded many Ladino songs. There is also Los Pasharos Sephardi in Turkey.
What a great merit, keep a Ladino newspaper alive! Coming from a Sephardi family which came from Turkey to Cuba in the early XX century, I must say that when I read Salom in my visit to Turkey was extremely proud of the community I belong. This struggle is what makes us cultural survivors. Kudos to the publisher of Salom!
Los idiomas son un capital intangible que es necesario conservar como lo hicieron esta comunidad en la turquia musulmana. un abrazo Jorge
Los bilbilicos se lloran y sospiran con amor de la perdida de su arbol en tierra sion....
Yes, I believe she had a sister Renee whom I thought worked as a simultaneous translator for the UN. Also a cousin living in Israel from Ankara, Erol. I would love to be in touch with her again, as would other friends here in the US who knew her back in the '70s in Jerusalem.
Hello I read your note about Yvonne Levy. I think this is my sister, who lived in Jerusalem and then moved to Manchester. I now write and get published in Ladino. Renee
I was born in Tangiers and I remember as a very young boy being kind of "embarassed" that my maternal granmother conversing with me with some ladino words or phrases in front of my spanish friends. Of course being so close to Spain, we all were perfectly fluent in modern spanish and that the "old spanish" as we called it vanished faster than in Turkey and elsewere. However, there were many songs, that I remember to this day, that were sang in joyous occasions. All this is part of the incredible richness of jewish culture.
In Buenos Aires there are a lot of elderly people who speak ladino, and most jews understand it because of the obvious similarities with modern Spanish. The most famous ladino song ("Abraham Avinu") is frequently heard in synagogues during shabbat services, bar mitzvahs, weddings, etc.
shalom,i live in london and wondered was there anyone who has an interest,love,knowledge of ladino/judeo spanish history.or know of any forthcoming concerts.please contact me. stellumi@hotmail.com gracias ester
i agree!i have many ladino c.d.s and hope that that this language and heritage be kept alive!
There is an association in France called Vidas Largas that teaches university courses in Ladino in Paris and elsewhere. It was started by Haim Vidal Sephiha a Sorbonne professor-emeritus. This is an EU-sponsored article on Ladino's origins and evolution which includes a precise explanation of what being Sephardi really means, as well as of course what it doesn't really mean. It explodes a few myths. http://www.sephardicstudies.org/judeo-spanish.html
yes they have also the site of salom.. here is the link and for the other people who wants to read the news in ladino www.salom.com.tr o and dont forget you have also turkish(jewish) band (and they are also familiar in turkiye) who called "sefarad" and they doing well in turkiye
Don't worry, if nothing else, the marvelous melodies and verses will ensure Ladino's survival. Isn't there a conservation project ongoing at the music conservatory of Istanbul?
Spanish is a very popular language to learn, especially in Canada and the U.S. Many people want to know it. Some of them are Jewish. It would be amazing if in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, or some other major city, there was a language school which taught Ladino, to people who want to understand and be conversant in Spanish. It could be marketed as "Spanish with a Jewish accent". In fact, the same could be done for similar Jewish languages. Yiddish, marketed to those who were interested in learning German. Judeo-Arabic, marketed to those who were interested in learning Arabic. Why not?
Indeed, Moise Rahmani is a tirelessly energetic champion of Ladino who, apart from publishing Los Muestros, has staged many Ladino cultural events including, in 1992, an unforgettable festival to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
Yes, I remember La Luz, but haven't seen it for years so it's probably defunct.
Hodja Nasraddin, a famous Turkish folkloric personality, while adressing his wife, introduced the term; "Sen icerden ben disardan" meaning "You from the inside, me from the outside" (As both were trying hard to loose their possessions to strangers). By reducing to a bare minimum the number of Jewish children ,BY INTERMARRYING AT THE RATE OF 20%, by installing Turkish as a mother tongue the 23.000 Jews from Turkey are opting for auto-destruction. The only thing that in the meantime makes them a group apart is that the Nationalist Turks don`t call them "Turks" but "Jews from Turkey". Sad isn`t it.
I found the website "aki-yerushalayim.co.il, which you were kind enough to introduce me to in the above post. It is fascinating how the Jewish people who were expelled from Spain in 1492, have been able to preserve their heritage and their culture.
My apologies, the website is www.sefarad.org
Tilda, does the ladino newspaper beeng publish on the net ?? If so, Please inform the URL Mario
My cousin in Brussels Mr Moise Rahmani is the editor of the monthly magazine "Los Muestros". A lot of the articles are in ladino and they also have a website "www.sefarad.com".
When I lived in Israel I think there was a Ladino paper still published called La Luz (the Light). You could sometimes hear it spoken in Jaffa among the Bulgarian Jews.
There is no Ladino daily in Israel but take a look at Aki Yerushalayim: http://www.aki-yerushalayim.co.il/ay/index.htm Moshe Shaul, who has worked ceaselessly at keeping Ladino alive, started a radio program by the same name many years ago that is still aired and this magazine is its offshoot.
During the yrs I lived in Jerusalem I remember a friend of mine, Yvonne Levy, from Istanbul, told me that she and her generation spoke Turkish, her mother spoke Turkish with a Ladino accent and her grandmother spoke only Ladino. This may have been at home. I remember breaking the Yom Kippur fast at her apartment with Turkish coffee and bread spread with olive oil and salt as the first food. She eventually left for Manchester, England and I often wonder what became of her. The Turkish Jews seemed to have a wonderful ability for speaking a number of languages. Many of the girls studied at the school run by the Soeurs de Notre Dame de Sion so were fluent in French as well as English.
Iam not Matilda Levy who made aliya and klita. Iam the editor in chief of the Shalom newspaper printed in İstanbul.Actually people know me as Tilda Levi,but Yoav Stern was polite enough to write the official name,the one which is on my ID-that is Matilda Levi.
Some forty years ago, I can remember purchasing a newspaper that was sold on the Derech Haatzmaut in Haifa that was written in Ladino. The name of the paper could have been LA VERDAD (the truth), I am not sure that it is the correct name. It was a small paper, perhaps eight pages and not printed on regular size newspaper such as the Romanian newspaper VIATA NOASTRA. What I remember about the Ladino paper is that the letter "k" was used, and the letter "k" is not found in modern Spanish. Ladino is a very historical language, and I had little trouble in reading it.
Is this the same Matilda Levy that made aliya in about 1990 as a masters student in Pharmacy but returned to Turkey after the Gulf War due to poor health and unsuccessful "klita"? I worked beside her in the Pharmacy School and would love to hear from her again. She was very proud then to be one of the few Jews in Turkey that spoke perfect Turkish without any Spanish accent and did show disdain for the Ladino tainted Turkish that most of the Jews there spoke. Surprisingly she upgraded her Ladino while working as a pharmacist in Center Pharm in the Talpiot neighborhood dealing with elderly Ladino speaking customers.