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A New York celebration of Ladino aims to bust the myth that the Judeo-Spanish language is dead
(New York Jewish Week) — The sixth annual New York Ladino Day — which aims to celebrate and elevate Ladino culture in New York and throughout the world — will take place this Sunday at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
For the first time since the pandemic, the program will be conducted in person, though a livestream option is also available. This year’s theme is “Kontar i Kantar” — “Storytelling and Singing” — and will include a performance from Tony- and Grammy-nominated Broadway singer Shoshana Bean and a conversation with Michael Frank, author of “One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World,” as well as additional music-oriented speakers and performances.
“Music is certainly one of the domains in which the language is doing well and generating new interest and new music,” said Bryan Kirschen, a professor of Hispanic Linguistics at Binghamton University and one of the event’s organizers. (Kirschen was one of the New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” in 2017.)
Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, was once the primary language spoken by Jews on the Iberian Peninsula. After the Jews’ expulsion in 1492, they brought language with them throughout the Ottoman Empire — Turkey, North Africa and the Balkans. Today, the estimated number of Ladino speakers around the world — mostly Sephardic Jews — ranges between 60,000 to 300,000, from fluent speakers to descendants who are familiar with some words.
Sephardic Jews were the first Jewish immigrants in New York, founding Congregation Shearith Israel in 1654, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. (It’s still in operation today at 2 West 70th St., where it has been since 1897.) Sephardic Jews remained the only active Jewish community in New York until the wave of German Jewish immigration in the early 19th century, followed by the mass immigration of Eastern European Jews that began at the tail-end of the 19th century.
Soon enough, Ashkenazi Jews quickly outnumbered New York’s Sephardic community, though Sephardic and Ladino culture continues to thrive today. Today, the main hubs for Sephardic and Ladino culture and education are the American Sephardi Federation and the Kehilla Kedosha Synagogue and Museum, a Greek Romaniote synagogue on the Lower East Side, said Kirschen, and there are large Sephardic synagogues in Canarsie, Brooklyn and Forest Hills, Queens that still conduct services in Ladino.
Ladino, said Kirschen, remains “a very living, in some ways thriving language, interestingly enough, particularly since the pandemic.”
Ahead of Sunday’s celebration — which is co-curated by Jane Mushabac, a professor emerita of English at City University of New York and a Ladino scholar and writer — the New York Jewish Week caught up with Kirschen to discuss the program, his personal interest in Ladino, and how Ashkenazi Jews can help uplift Ladino language and culture.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Kirschen, far left, leads a panel discussion during the 2020 New York Ladino Day celebration. (Courtesy Bryan Kirschen)
New York Jewish Week: How did you become interested in Ladino culture? Are you from a Sephardic family?
I’m from an Ashkenazi, Yiddish-speaking family. So I’m not Sephardic. But for the past 15 years or so, I’ve been doing my best to learn as much about and embrace Sephardic culture as I can, and learn as much as I can about Ladino as well. My own interest stems from learning languages — I’m a Spanish professor at Binghamton University and I have also studied Hebrew for numerous years. So when I first came across Ladino as this Judeo-Spanish language, it interested me for a number of reasons. Once I started to meet actual speakers, it became so much more than just about the language — it became about celebrating and promoting the culture, the history, the connections, of course the food and the music.
What is the origin story of New York Ladino Day?
The idea of Ladino Day came about in 2013 — to have a day when communities around the world would celebrate all that remains. Originally, the day was selected to be during Hanukkah. But because there is no real central organization that governs the language — though there are different institutions, particularly in Israel, that try to foster the language and help promote it — Ladino Day grew in many different directions.
These days, some communities celebrate in January, some in February, some still in December. The National Authority of Ladino in Israel has their own International Day of Ladino in March. But the important thing is that communities all around the world are committed to celebrating it in their own ways.
As far as New York goes, the American Sephardi Federation at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan started holding a Ladino Day six years ago under the direction of my collaborator, Jane Mushabac, who is Sephardic from a Ladino-speaking family. I had been separately organizing Judeo-Spanish celebrations at a synagogue in Forest Hills, Queens, so the following year we joined forces and started co-curating the program together and have been doing that ever since.
The theme for this year’s program is “Kontar i Kantar.” How is this year’s theme different from years’ past?
Last year, we did “Salud y Vida,” which is a common expression for “health and life” and which was fitting for the time. Like most of the world, we had to pivot for the last two years and hold the program online. That afforded different opportunities — we were able to bring in speakers from around the world in a way that was much more doable, and we were able to open up our program to the world. Normally, we like to focus on New York talent and language, but the previous few years doing online events we were featuring different voices from the Sephardic world, so many new connections were made.
Because of that experience, this year’s program will be back in person at the Center for Jewish History, but with a hybrid option. The theme is “Kontar i Kantar,” “Storytelling and Singing.” It will both acknowledge how important music has been to Ladino, and celebrate how, in recent years, there have been so many initiatives for people to get together to share their stories in or about Ladino and to sing in Ladino.
Most Jews in New York have an Ashkenazi background. What role or responsibility do you think Ashkenazi Jews have in honoring and preserving Ladino culture?
Yes, the numbers [of Ashkenazi versus Sephardi Jews] don’t match up. Still, Sephardim from Turkey and areas of the former Ottoman Empire brought tens of thousands of Sephardic, Ladino-speaking Jews to New York City at the start of the 20th century, but as a minority — as a minority within the Jews, as a minority-speaking language, etc. So as someone who is Ashkenazi, I understand the enormous responsibility that I have to represent this language in a positive and genuine way to others and to work with and uplift speakers of Ladino.
Like Yiddish, thousands upon thousands of Ladino speakers were killed in the Holocaust, and those who didn’t experience the same fate often gave up their Ladino to assimilate. So many speakers today, who are typically in their 70s, 80s or 90s — or maybe younger generations who know some words here and there like foods, terms of kin — haven’t historically been so proud of using their Ladino. So aside from research and teaching, I’m really passionate about encouraging speakers and semi-speakers to use their language and to take pride in their language and ideally, to give them a platform to do so.
Bonus question: What are some common misconceptions about Ladino?
Ladino is not a dead language — that’s something I’m very vocal about. There are all sorts of ways to classify and categorize languages, but as long as they are living, breathing, speakers and semi-speakers, the language is living. So Ladino is a living language, despite all the obstacles. There are speakers and there are amazing resources out there willing to share their language and their story with people.
“Kontar i Kantar: The 6th Annual New York Ladino Day” will take place at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th St.) on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. A livestream option is available. Buy tickets and find more information here.
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The post A New York celebration of Ladino aims to bust the myth that the Judeo-Spanish language is dead appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Tidbits: Yiddish activist in Sweden receives royal medal
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
סוסאַנע שנײַדערמאַן־ריץ, די אָנגעזעענע ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסטקע אין שוועדן און די פּרעזידענטקע פֿונעם שוועדישן צווײַג פֿון דער אַלוועלטלעכער ציוניסטישער פֿרויען־אָרגאַניזאַציע „וויזאָ“ — וועט באַקומען איינע פֿון שוועדנס העכסטע קיניגלעכע אויסצייכענונגען, „דעם קעניגס מעדאַל“, דעם 9טן סעפּטעמבער, אינעם קיניגלעכן פּאַלאַץ אין שטאָקהאָלם.
לויט דער אָפֿיציעלער באַשרײַבונג ווערט שנײַדערמאַן־ריץ אָנערקענט פֿאַר איר „ממשותדיקן בײַשטײַער צו דער מינאָריטעט־שפּראַך, ייִדיש.“ שוין צענדליקער יאָרן וואָס שנײַדערמאַן־ריץ קעמפֿט לטובֿת דעם אָפּהיטן די ייִדישע קולטור אין שוועדן.
שנײַדערמאַן־ריץ איז געווען איינע פֿון די פֿירערס בײַם פֿאַרזיכערן אַן אָפֿיציעלע אָנערקענונג פֿון ייִדיש ווי איינע פֿון שוועדנס נאַציאָנאַלע מינאָריטעט־שפּראַכן. צום סוף האָט די קאַמפּאַניע מצליח געווען. ייִדיש האָט באַקומען אַ לעגאַלן סטאַטוס און דערבײַ דערמעגלעכט אַז די רעגירונג זאָל העלפֿן פֿינאַנצירן דאָס אויפֿהאַלטן און אַנטוויקלען די ייִדישע שפּראַך און קולטור.
די אָנערקענונג ווערט באַטראַכט פֿאַר אַ ווענדפּונקט פֿאַר דער ייִדישער קהילה אין שוועדן, בפֿרט איצט ווען די זאָרג וועגן אַנטיסעמיטיזם וואַקסט פֿון טאָג צו טאָג בײַ ייִדן איבער גאַנץ אייראָפּע.
ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסטן זאָגן, אַז די אָפֿיציעלע שטיצע פֿאַר דער שפּראַך העלפֿט אָפּהיטן אַ וויכטיקן טייל פֿון דער ייִדישער קולטור־ירושה און פֿאַרשטאַרקט דעם אָנדענק פֿון ייִדישן לעבן אין שוועדן במשך פֿון דער געשיכטע.
צו זען דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To see this article in English, click here.
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From a Catskills bungalow in 1969, you can almost see astronauts
Crickets chirp as the audience enters The Laura Pels Theatre. Tall grass rims the front of the stage, and home movies from summer resorts in the Catskills are projected on a screen. Mother and son wave hi from a lake, a boy swims laps and bubbies walk past in their swimsuits.
This is the setting of A Walk on the Moon, a new off-Broadway musical written by Pamela Gray and based on the 1999 film of the same name for which she wrote the screenplay. Inspired by Gray’s childhood summers in a “Borscht Belt” bungalow colony, the show depicts the life of a Brooklyn-accented Jewish family against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Vietnam War and the Woodstock music festival.
The show opens on Pearl Kantrowitz (Talia Suskauer) looking out wistfully as she stands in front of her summer bungalow. Pearl, who became pregnant with her daughter at 16, is struggling with the concept of domestic life amid a decade filled with excitement and chaos. It’s nearing the end of the ‘60s, and she feels as though she had barely experienced it.
In contrast, Pearl’s husband, Marty (Max Chernin), is a TV repairman entirely resistant to change, even when it comes to the bakery where his “blackout” cake comes from. He’s only in the Catskills for the weekend though, leaving Pearl subject to her temptations for the rest of the week. These desires come in the form of Walker Jerome (Sam Gravitte), a hippie “blouse man” who plans to move to California. Before the curtain closes on Act I, Walker and Pearl begin an affair as a man lands on the moon — and are left to deal with the ramifications in the second act of the show.
Pearl’s journey of self-exploration parallels that of her teenage daughter Allison (Sophie Pollono), who is falling in love with Ross (Oscar Williams), a 16-year-old boy who describes himself as “Big Jewish Hendrix.” Allison, who first appears clutching a Joni Mitchell album, is a headstrong girl who speaks out against the state of the world in any way she can — she lambasts her brother’s cap gun and refuses to attend the colony’s 4th of July celebration. Ross is an aspiring musician who, though he admires the counter-culture singers of the time, is nervous to take tangible action of his own.
As the teenage couple discusses the changing world around them and finds connection over the music of Ross’ guitar, Pearl seeks to regain the teenage years that she lost, experimenting with marijuana, attending Woodstock and attempting to hide her affair from her children and her watchful mother-in-law, Lillian (Andréa Burns).
The moon landing means something different to each character: Allison views it as a U.S. invasion analogous to Vietnam, Walker is inspired by the potential it symbolizes, Ross considers writing a song about it. Though daily life is primarily filled with mah jongg games and visits from the knish man, this tiny colony isn’t immune from the tumultuous time period. Walker discusses his brother who is missing in action and Ross contemplates burning his draft card, singing with Allison about the need for change, lest the “candle in the wind goes out.”
Some plot elements are a tad heavy handed, such as when Pearl buys a tie-dye shirt and sings a song with Marty about it (he finds her shirt too new and different) or the Jewish wives’ discussion and ensuing song about Betty Friedan (“keep your book, cuz we ain’t ready”). The show also glosses over some things, such as how Pearl explains her whereabouts while she’s with Walker and who manages her responsibilities while the two of them are together.
The musical numbers, coupled with dances performed in colorful capris and mod dresses, concern forbidden love, Saturday nights in the Catskills and the momentous nature of the moon landing. While none is particularly groundbreaking, they are well-performed; Suskauer is a vocal standout.
However, these critiques don’t detract from the show’s mission to recreate the Catskills bungalows once prominent in Jewish consciousness. The wives get farputst for dinner; Pearl is said to be “schtupping” the blouse man; the loudspeaker announces that “Shimmy the Pickle Man” is coming to town. The set, a bungalow amidst a sea of trees, creates a nostalgic and intimate ambience supplemented by projected video of the moon landing, protests and napalm bombs.
Catskills colonies are now few, and Woodstock is only a distant memory. For a few hours, though, one can imagine what it’s like to be in the summer of 1969, and Neil Armstrong is about to walk on the moon.
The post From a Catskills bungalow in 1969, you can almost see astronauts appeared first on The Forward.
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In Israel’s astonishing new reality, voters expect Netanyahu to try to sabotage elections
Two extraordinary recent developments illustrate how politically unsettled Israel is in advance of elections this year: Supreme Court Justice Noam Solberg, chairman of Israel’s Central Elections Committee, publicly outlined the legal conditions under which elections could possibly be postponed during a national emergency, and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might try to sabotage elections and have to be physically removed from office.
The fact that such scenarios are now being openly discussed by figures at the center of Israel’s democratic system reveals how close the country’s democracy is to a breakdown — and the country’s character to a fundamental change.
For decades, Israel prided itself on maintaining democratic continuity under impossible conditions. Through wars, terror campaigns, coalition collapses and corruption scandals, there remained an unspoken assumption that elections would occur and governments would leave office when they lost.
Now, for the first time in Israeli history, a substantial portion of the public fears that this assumption no longer stands.
“If Netanyahu tries to sabotage the elections, we will have no choice but to drive him out with sticks and stones,” Barak said, speaking in Hebrew on Israel Radio.
The astonishing thing: no one else on the program was astonished.
The unthinkable, now possible
The atmosphere surrounding the expected election, which must take place before the end of October, has become marked by increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric as Netanyahu faces negative polls. A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 61% of Israelis believe Netanyahu should not run for reelection at all. Another poll found that 63% of Israelis fear for the future of Israeli democracy itself, while 56% said that internal divisions pose a greater threat to Israel than external enemies.
These are extraordinary numbers in a country historically defined by external security fears. Increasingly, many Israelis now believe the gravest threat facing the country is internal democratic collapse.
Justice Solberg’s remarks last week, which took place at a closed academic event and were reported later, added fuel to the fire.
Solberg, who is a conservative and considered politically sympathetic to Netanyahu, outlined six principles that would have to govern any decision to postpone elections, including a clearly defined plan for a return to normal electoral procedures.
Solberg emphasized that no election should be postponed merely because a crisis exists. Rather, authorities must demonstrate that the emergency has materially impaired the country’s ability to conduct free, equal and genuine elections. He concluded by expressing hope that Israel would never face circumstances requiring such a decision.
The fear that Israel is actually quite close to such a postponement cuts across much of Israeli society. I’ve heard it expressed by secular liberals, military veterans, former intelligence officials, legal scholars, journalists, centrist politicians, and even some conservatives who once supported Netanyahu enthusiastically. What unites them is the growing belief that Netanyahu now considers remaining in power to be an existential necessity — and that his radical base will back him no matter what outrage he attempts.
Yair Golan, former deputy IDF chief and leader of the opposition Democrats Party, has become one of the loudest voices warning that the danger is no longer theoretical. Golan warned publicly that Netanyahu’s camp could “sabotage, falsify, lie and intimidate” in order to remain in power. He also warned against attempts to alter election rules before voting takes place, and announced plans for extensive election monitoring operations to try to help safeguard the vote.
A decade ago, such statements from a senior Israeli political figure would have sounded deranged. Today, many Israelis hear them as sober preparation.
Inventing an emergency
Netanyahu’s current term, after a very close election in 2022, has been calamitous, starting with his hugely unpopular effort to eviscerate the judiciary, then continuing with the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and a three-year multi-front war with unsatisfying conclusions. Most Israelis believe he extended at least one branch of the conflict, in Gaza, to satisfy ultranationalists in his coalition.
Which means there’s precedent for believing Netanyahu might invent or invite an emergency to further his personal goals.
One possibility is yet another external war, involving a manufactured escalation with Iran or Hezbollah, or in the West Bank, where radical settlers terrorize Palestinians while Israeli authorities look the other way. Another, and the most obvious, would involve a sudden change in the status of the Temple Mount — a goal toward which some far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition have been agitating — or other combustible religious sites.
Any domestic route Netanyahu might choose would invite a direct confrontation between the executive branch and the judiciary over the legitimacy of democratic procedures themselves.
If the Supreme Court ruled against Netanyahu, many fear the coalition could refuse compliance outright. After all, Netanyahu has spent years seeding the idea that the Supreme Court — and also prosecutors, the attorney general, and the civil service — are liberal fronts which do not necessarily need to be obeyed.
Devaluing democracy
The columnist Ravit Hecht recently argued in Haaretz that significant portions of the coalition no longer merely oppose liberal democracy, but reject democracy itself.
As Netanyahu has increasingly aligned himself with these forces, Hecht wrote, he has adopted “more and more dictatorial characteristics,” leading to “real fear for the purity of the coming election or even that it will be held.”
At the same time, much of the right has mainstreamed conspiracy theories surrounding the Oct. 7 attack and the Gaza war. Because of the Netanyahu machine’s jackhammer agitprop, almost a third of Israelis now believe the “betrayal from within” theory in which Israel’s security services assisted Hamas on Oct. 7 to harm Netanyahu.
Figures such as Likud Knesset member Tally Gotliv have openly accused the Shin Bet, military officers, protest leaders, judges and the attorney general of betrayal or collaboration with Hamas. Instead of being marginalized, such rhetoric increasingly receives tacit acceptance from parts of the governing coalition.
Yediot Ahronot columnist Ben-Dror Yemini compared the phenomenon to the Nazi-era “stab-in-the-back” myth after World War I, which blamed Jews for Germany’s humiliation. Yemini warned that societies consumed by conspiracy theories eventually destroy trust in every institution capable of holding democracy together.
Given this level of agitation, it is fair to view Israel’s coming election as something far more significant than a contest between left and right or rival policy agendas. Increasingly, it looks like a referendum on whether the country remains the democracy it has always claimed — and largely managed — to be.
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