{"id":1494,"date":"2012-07-22T13:01:38","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T19:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=1494"},"modified":"2012-07-22T13:17:48","modified_gmt":"2012-07-22T19:17:48","slug":"rushing-to-preserve-ladino-legacies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/rushing-to-preserve-ladino-legacies\/","title":{"rendered":"Rushing to preserve Ladino legacies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By CHARLOTTE ANTHONY<\/p>\n<p>NEW YORK (JTA) &#8212; Isaac Azose knew he had a treasure in his hands &#8212; a nearly century-old booklet for Ladino-speaking Jews immigrating to the United States that featured English, Ladino and Yiddish expressions to help them acculturate into their new communities. \u00a0\u201cI thought to myself, I\u2019ve got a real find here,\u201d said Azose, the cantor at Congregation Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle, Wash., whose family came from Turkey.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1496\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Devin-Naar-and-Rick-LaMarche_edit.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1496\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1496 lazyload\" title=\"Devin Naar and Rick LaMarche\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Devin-Naar-and-Rick-LaMarche_edit-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Devin-Naar-and-Rick-LaMarche_edit-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Devin-Naar-and-Rick-LaMarche_edit.jpg 600w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/225;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1496\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1496\" title=\"Devin Naar and Rick LaMarche\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Devin-Naar-and-Rick-LaMarche_edit-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Devin-Naar-and-Rick-LaMarche_edit-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Devin-Naar-and-Rick-LaMarche_edit.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-1496\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Devin Naar, left, and community member Rick LaMarche, examining Ladino documents at the Purim Bazaar at Congregation Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle, Wash., March 2012. (Andrea Soroko)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>So he became one of many people in Seattle to share a Ladino artifact with Devin Naar, an assistant professor in Jewish studies at the University of Washington who is trying to uncover, collect, preserve and digitize the rich heritage of Sephardi Jews.<\/p>\n<p>While small collections of Ladino books and documents can be found at the Library of Congress, the American Sephardi Federation and Yeshiva University, Naar says his project, the Seattle Sephardic Treasures, is the first community-based initiative to gather Ladino source materials in one place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMore than 10,000 Yiddish books are readily accessible and digitized through the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., but no equivalent exists for Ladino and virtually no original Ladino books can be accessed online,\u201d said Naar, whose effort is part of the larger Sephardic Studies Initiative of the University of Washington&#8217;s Stroum Jewish Studies Program.<\/p>\n<p>Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish, was the language of Sephardi Jews whose ancestors were expelled from Spain in 1492 and then settled throughout the Mediterranean basin of the Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s Ashkenazi counterpart, Yiddish, continues to survive through Yiddish-speaking haredi Orthodox communities and some secular advocates of the language. Ladino, however, has faced a steep decline in the past century. While Yiddish has more than 3 million speakers worldwide, UNESCO estimates that fewer than 150,000 people still speak Ladino.<\/p>\n<p>Gloria Ascher, co-director of Judaic Studies at Tufts University, offers several reasons for the language\u2019s precipitous dropoff:\u00a090 percent of Ladino speakers, particularly in places such as Bulgaria and Greece, were murdered during the Holocaust; with the rise of Zionism, Hebrew is emphasized as the central Jewish language; and Ladino-speaking immigrant parents encourage their children to speak the native language of their new countries, such as English.<\/p>\n<p>After New York and Los Angeles, Seattle has the third largest Sephardi community in the United States. According to a 2000 study by the Jewish Federation of Seattle, there are 2,700 Sephardi households in the community\u2019s total 22,490 Jewish households.<\/p>\n<p>Naar started collecting materials at Ezra Bessaroth, a Sephardi synagogue, at the annual Purim bazaar in March. He already has gathered dozens of documents, including a rare Ladino textbook published in Salonika, Greece, in 1929. He even found a set of letters from the 1930s written by a 9-year old girl from the Island of Rhodes to her family members in Seattle.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1498\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Ladino_Yiddish_English.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1498\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1498 lazyload\" title=\"Ladino_Yiddish_English\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Ladino_Yiddish_English-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Ladino_Yiddish_English-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Ladino_Yiddish_English.jpg 800w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/212;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1498\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1498\" title=\"Ladino_Yiddish_English\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Ladino_Yiddish_English-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Ladino_Yiddish_English-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Ladino_Yiddish_English.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-1498\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A document from &quot;A Guide For Sephardic Immigrants in America,&quot; which was published in New York in 1916, showing words in English and their translation in Yiddish and Ladino. (Courtesy of Isaac Azose)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cShe was able to correspond her way and her family\u2019s way off the island of Rhodes to evade Nazi persecution and to find safety in the U.S,\u201d Naar said. \u201cThe entire story is preserved in the set of letters. It\u2019s really an amazing story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The value of the objects should not be underestimated, says Noam Pianko, chair of the Stroum Jewish Studies Program.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the stories and the past of the Sephardic Jewish community of Seattle, so it has tremendous communal value,\u201d he said. \u201cThese documents are important on a scholarly level as well. They tell an untold and yet incredibly important story of the Sephardic Jewish experience in America.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many of the documents, he says, have been buried in basements or closets and breathe an authenticity that can never be captured in academic works.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to make the materials available in their original form so you can see the handwriting, the coffee stains and the lived lives of the owners,\u201d Naar said.<\/p>\n<p>Lynne Winters, director of the American Sephardi Federation, says it is remarkable that Naar has gained so many original documents.\u00a0\u201cWhen you can touch something that someone\u2019s hands touched however many years ago, whether it is 20, 25 or 100 years ago, there\u2019s something unique about that than just seeing it in a book,&#8221; she said. &#8220;You are touching history and making a physical connection with someone who\u2019s passed.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1499\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Sephardic_guide_edit.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1499\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1499 lazyload\" title=\"Sephardic_guide_edit\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Sephardic_guide_edit-300x189.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"189\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Sephardic_guide_edit-300x189.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Sephardic_guide_edit.jpg 900w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/189;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1499\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1499\" title=\"Sephardic_guide_edit\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Sephardic_guide_edit-300x189.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"189\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Sephardic_guide_edit-300x189.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Sephardic_guide_edit.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-1499\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A chapter from &quot;A Guide For Sephardic Immigrants in America,&quot; which was published in New York in 1916, written in Ladino.(Courtesy of Isaac Azose)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Naar hopes to use his effort as a pilot program to be replicated with Sephardi communities elsewhere in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLadino source materials, although in smaller amounts to begin with, are not easily accessible and there\u2019s been no project until now to make Ladino materials widely accessible over the Internet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Yiddish documents, which have been catalogued through the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and other archives, Ladino documents have no such home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have a few Ladino books and they are in pretty rough condition, and there are not going to be anymore coming out,\u201d said Randall Belinfante, librarian and archivist at the National Sephardic Library. \u201cPeople are writing about Ladino culture, but they are not writing Ladino materials.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lyudmila Sholokhova, the head librarian at the YIVO Institute, says there is no clear estimate of how many Ladino books still exist. However, there are an estimated 600 Ladino works at Yeshiva University, 200 more at YIVO, 200 at the Library of Congress and about 170 at the National Sephardic Library.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDigitization will bring huge possibilities for people to get access to their heritage and also huge possibilities for libraries around the world to collaborate because at the moment, we don\u2019t have a clear idea of what other libraries have,\u201d Sholokhova said.<\/p>\n<p>There is a level of interest in preserving the language. Ladino Komunita, an online Ladino forum started by Rachel Bortnick in 1999, tries to unite the Ladino-speaking community. The forum now has 1,400 people from more than 42 countries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe language was the rope that tied our culture together,\u201d Sholokhova said. \u201cWithout the language and without the communities that spoke the language, all we can do is to pick up the pieces and rescue them from oblivion &#8212; the food, the sayings, the customs related to our Jewishness in the Sephardic form.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Azose is hoping that Naar\u2019s effort will have an impact not just on scholars but on today\u2019s descendants of Ladino speakers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the younger generation will take more of an interest than the current generation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey will want to know more about their history and where they came from, and their parents may not be able to answer those questions for them &#8212; but this will.\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Rushing%20to%20preserve%20Ladino%20legacies\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[8790,8795,314,327,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1494"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1497,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions\/1497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}