While we were sleeping ….

Collage:  Making guests welcome

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The last post talked about a push for Yiddish potentially waking up Sephardics to their, in fact, deep personal connection to Ladino.  But because most Sephardics were asleep, we haven’t much noticed or seemed to care what was happening to it.

Fortunately, we have been blessed with angels who have been watching over us and our language.Rachel Amado Bortnick is definitely one of them.  By starting an online community of Ladino speakers, Ladino Komunitika, she came up with an incredibly effective – and very friendly! – means to create connections between remaining Ladino speakers worldwide.

The Yiddish argument for Ladino

Collage:  Anonymous American guy (until he speaks)

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There was an excellent article in the Forward on Yiddish that makes the case equally well for Ladino.

How Yiddish Could Save the Jewish People 

Language, Not Marriage or Religious Practice, Is Key to Community

The American Jewish community and its media frequently express concern about the Jewish future in America, citing mounting rates of assimilation and increasingly liberal trends in religious practice. In this discussion, intermarriage is frequently conceived of as being both the standard measure and the primary symptom of just how assimilated Jews are. What is usually left out of the discussion is any mention of linguistic assimilation.

Don’t speak Ladino? Stop what you’re doing

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This blog has a gift just for you.

Unwrap carefully.

Your grandmother’s advice about oil

Collage:  Our true relation to the world

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Ever at a loss for the right words?

Do you have close friends who are constantly having relationship problems or work problems?

Do any of them plead with their dates to call them?

Do any of them keep trying to get their spouse to pay more attention?

Singing insults?

Collage:  Too cool to have fun

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 For your wedding – tell the truth, now – did your mother and mother-in-law sing insults at each other in Ladino?

No?

What stopped them?

Don’t they know any insults?

Or a tune?

What happened to Ladino?

Collage:  Dignity , beauty, strength

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While many of us are aware that Sephardic Jews, fleeing the Inquisition, found safety for hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire and in North Africa, outside the reach of Christian Europe and the Catholic Inquistion, we tend to be less far less aware of what happened that left our culture without the bulk of its Ladino speakers (and writers and publishers).

What does that even mean?

Collage:  Child in a corporate culture

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The first post didn’t dilly dally around, did it?  It said that Ladino is the heart of Sephardic culture.  But heavens, what does that even mean?

In rummaging around looking for a Ladino saying that might help convey some sense of the meaning that language carries, I ran across Sephardic Proverbs by Michael Castro.  For him, language goes beyond mere words.

Proverbs …. articulated  the  unwritten  laws  of how to be and  how  to  see,  and represented the distilled wit and wisdom of Ladino, or  Judezmo, the medieval  Spanish with a dash of Turkish, Hebrew and  other  influences, spoken  as  the  main  language  in  Sephardic communities throughout the world until the devastation of the Holocaust.