‘A David and Goliath story’: The Jewish history of Cinco de Mayo
The 1862 Battle of Puebla paved the way for Mexico to become a haven for Jews fleeing persecution.
Ladino
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Recipes The spinach frittata that connects me to my Sephardic grandmother
In one of the scenes from my book, “The Poetry of Secrets,” Isabel, the main character is served fritada espinaca, or spinach frittata, at a Shabbat dinner, her first one since she has been captured by the Spanish Inquisition. My choice of that food was deliberate. It’s an homage to my grandmother. She was born…
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News Why only Yiddish and Ladino? Oxford wants to teach you Judeo-Tat and Karaim
When Jews long ago ordered their coffee in Baghdad, gossiped in Derbent or traded recipes in Kurdistan, they did so in Judeo-Arabic, Juhuri and Neo-Aramaic— languages that are all but lost, and with them centuries of unique Jewish history, culture and tradition. Beginning this fall, Oxford University will be offering online classes in nearly a…
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News For 35 years, this mother-daughter duo has run a radio show on Ladino and Sephardic Jewish culture from Madrid
MADRID (JTA) — Matilde Gini de Barnatán and her daughter Viviana Rajel Barnatán didn’t set out to make Jewish history in Spain. In the 1960s and ’70s, Matilde, now 85, established herself in Argentina as a prominent researcher, teacher and scholar of the history of Sephardic culture and the Spanish Inquisition in Ibero-America. Her extensive…
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Opinion Ashkenormativity? What about Israel-Centrism?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I first heard complaints about Ashkenormativity in March 2009, five or six years before the term was apparently coined. I was attending a conference in Chicago for young Yiddish speakers and college students interested in studying the language. While explaining how learning Yiddish as a teenager and…
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News When Sephardic Salonica Burned A Century Ago — Only To Be Destroyed Again
(JTA) — A century ago, on Aug. 18, 1917, a massive fire roared through the Mediterranean port city of Salonica, Greece, then home to the largest and most dynamic Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jewish community in the world. According to local legend, the fire erupted one Sabbath afternoon amid World War I when the coals of a…
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Fast Forward Spain To Create Ladino Academy In Israel To Help Preserve Dying Jewish Language
(JTA) — Spain’s leading linguistic authority will create an academy in Israel dedicated to the study and preservation of the Ladino language. The institution will be the 24th branch of the Spanish Royal Academy, the Guardian reported Tuesday. Dario Villanueva, director of the Spanish Royal Academy, or RAE, said Ladino is “an extraordinarily important cultural…
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Opinion Rescue Ladino, The Language Of Sephardic Jews
Ladino, the language of Sephardic Jews, also represents a culture that has survived hundreds of years and is still relevant today. And more people need to know about it. Ladino is a pan-Mediterranean language that crosses geographic, linguistic and cultural boundaries. Otherwise known as Judeo-Spanish, Ladino is the hybrid dialect that Jews from the Iberian…
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