HISTORY

The history of Ladino’s literary creation, whether in written or spoken form, dates back centuries. Romero (1992) and Schwarzwald (2006) consider various genres within Ladino print and oral literature, and Cohen’s (2021) Thesaurus of The Ladino Book provides an annotated bibliography of several thousand publications in Ladino from the years 1490–1960. In Sefarad in my heart: A Ladino reader, which similarly covers a variety of texts from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, Lazar (1999) cautions readers not to be surprised by the ample amount of religious literature he includes compared to secular content since “until the middle of the 19th century, the Eastern Sephardim were living their daily lives around their synagogues and their rabbis, and the only schooling they ever received was confined to religious instruction” (p. viii). Post expulsion, one can find translations of the Bible in the calque variety of Ladino written in Hebrew characters, as is the case of the Ladino Pentateuch printed in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1547 and in Latin characters in the case of the Ferrara Bible, printed in Ferrara in 1553. While the former catered to Eastern Sephardim living primarily in Ottoman lands, the latter was intended for readership among Western Sephardim, like those who settled in Amsterdam (Lazar, 1999, p. 109).

Although most religious material written in Ladino was geared toward and accessible only to men, Schwarzwald (2010) demonstrates that some material, like two prayer books printed in the sixteenth century, were geared particularly toward women. Apart from religious texts and translations themselves, responsas, or question-and-answer structured testimonies between rabbinic scholars and respondents are also accounted for in Ladino; Benaim (2011) documents many such cases in the sixteenth century “within this legal genre [which] concern social, economic and moral conditions that differ greatly according to place and period” (p. 14). Borovaya (2017) proposes that post-expulsion literature in Ladino began in this very century, commencing with work which “aimed at overcoming the consequences of mass conversions by teaching normative Judaism to males who had vague or no knowledge of it and could not read Hebrew [language]” (p. 8). She considers Moses Almosnino of Salonica’s 1564 work Regimiento de la vida (The Regimen of Life), among others published during this period, to be a part of Ladino literature, despite the language in question catering much more to Castilian norms written in Hebrew-based characters. Regimiento de la vida itself served as a moral compass for proper behavior among men.

Yet it is the compendium of volumes of Me’am Lo’ez initiated by Yaakov Huli in Constantinople in 1730 and continued by many others that is often considered with highest regard with respect to Ladino literature. This work was created for the Ladino-speaking masses, in a language that was meant to examine and elucidate sacred Jewish texts. Efforts to reach the general (Sephardic) population were also undertaken by Abraham Asa, who Romero (1992) calls a “prolific translator” for his work to educate Sephardim in Ladino, as seen through his publications from the 1730s–1760s (p. 130). In comparing the initiatives of the Huli to Asa, Lehmann (2002) observes, “While Huli began a Sephardic encyclopedic Bible commentary, integrating everything he deemed important for a non-learned public, Abraham Asa tried to make a library of important books available to the Ladino reader” (p. 284). As such, the mission to educate Sephardim in Ladino was commonplace. Such efforts continued during the eighteenth and particularly nineteenth centuries. During this period, Lehmann (2005) notes the importance of musar literature in Ladino, which he explains as a didactic approach to reach large audiences on subject-based ethnical matters through “fables, stories, epigrams, and hagiography” (p. 4).

The first secular book to be published in Ladino was that of David M. Attias, who was born in Sarajevo and spent much of his life in Livorno. In 1778, Attias published La Güerta de Oro (The Garden of Gold), which includes a range of content or, as Berenguer Amador (2016) comments “is basically a miscellany and we can find in it several subgenres such as epistles, dialogues, language studies, legal texts and other minor subgenres like folk stories, ‘tricks’ and proverbs” (p. 404). Similar to previous themes and desires to publish that we have seen thus far, Borovaya (2017) observes “an interest in secular knowledge and in knowing European and other foreign languages in order to communicate with the non-Jewish world” (p. 57). In regard to the latter, Attias includes tables to teach the Italian and Greek alphabets and orthographies. In the case of Italian, Attias also provides sample conversations in the language for his readers, along with translations into Ladino. Through his text, Attias attempts to “transmit to Eastern Sephardim his enthusiasm for science and practical knowledge of the Western nations” (Berenguer Amador, 2016, p. 10).

The second half of the nineteenth century saw an explosion in the belles artes and translations of secular works, in addition to the advent of periodicals in Ladino. The publication of serialized belles lettres (or romansos) relied heavily on “borrowed elements from foreign-language texts” most often from French (Borovaya, 2011, p. 140). For this reason, Borovaya (2001) considers such works “rewritings” produced by “rewriters” (p. 156). Some of these works, translated from French, include Gulliver’s travels by Alexandre Benghiat of Izmir in 1897 and Romeo and Juliet by Jozef Karaso of Salonica in 1922. The publisher of the latter work notes the importance of bringing readers serious and well-regarded works, for he lamented “Por kontra ay numerozos livros sin dinguna valor literarya ni morala ke fueron puvlikados asta oy” (On the contrary, there are numerous works without any literary or moral value, which have been published until this day), thus publishing the current work (“Prefas,” 1922). Often, works were published in Ladino periodicals. For example, Sánchez-Pérez (2019) finds that (re)adaptations of Don Quijote were published in Hebrew-based characters in 1881 in Constantinople’s El Amigo de la Famiya and in Latin-based characters in the same city’s La Boz de Oriente in 1931. Novellas, poetry, and dramas were all part of literary production in Ladino. As Scolnik (2010) demonstrates, works even included the detective genre, with more than twenty novels from the Nat Pinkerton series, originally written in German.

Apart from hundreds of “rewritings,” the second half of the nineteenth century also saw the birth of what became a thriving print culture in Ladino newspapers. Borovaya (2011, p. 24) notes that there were about three-hundred “Sephardi” periodicals between the years 1845 and 1939, most of which were published in Ladino and found in Salonica (n=105), Istanbul (n=45), Sofia (n=30), and Izmir (n=23). The first periodical published in Ladino was Sha’are Mizrah or Las Puertas del Oryente (Gates of the East), printed in Izmir from 1845–1846. The second periodical in Ladino was Or Israel (Light to Israel), printed in Istanbul from 1853–1855. Though these papers, like many others printed in Ladino, were short-lived, periodicals such as El Tiempo, printed in Istanbul from 1872-1911, La Buena Esperanza, printed in Izmir from 1874-1917, and La Epoka, printed in Salonica from 1875–1911, demonstrate otherwise. In fact, even in the United States, Ben-Ur (1999) accounts for nineteen periodicals printed in Ladino primarily in New York City; La Amerika, printed from 1910–1922, and La Vara, printed from 1922–1948, were the longest-lasting papers in the country.

With the passing of La Epoka’s editor Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi, his sons were to honor his ultima rogativa (last request) by publishing pieces of his memoir in said paper. Though Sa’adi’s memoir covers much of his life from 1820–1903, most of it was written in the 1880s. Apart from being a rich source accounting for personal, communal, religious, and historical matters during a rather transitional period in Sephardic life and the Ottoman Empire, his memoir also serves as the first of its kind in Ladino. Mis Memorias (My Memoir) was printed in romanization in Ladino and translated into English in Rodrigue, Stein, & Jerusalmi’s (2012) A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica; the original manuscript, written in Solitreo, can also be viewed online in digitized format.

In addition to the written word, Ladino has a rich history of literary creation via the spoken word. The Sephardic repertoire includes poetic (coplas) and musical compositions (cancioneros) and ballads (romanceros), each differing in regard to content as well as structure (Weich-Shahak, 2010). Ladino song falls into a number of main genres, which Cohen (2010) lists as: romances, life cycle songs, calendar cycle songs and general (lyrical, topical, recreational) songs.” While the lyrics (i.e. text) of some of Ladino songs can be traced prior to the expulsion of Sephardim from Spain, Cohen (2011) dispels a common myth regarding the “medieval” nature of Ladino music in that the melodies themselves have been generated in the Sephardic diaspora itself, adapted throughout time and space.

Ladino song has been utilized and transmitted differently between men and women throughout history. Cohen (1993) observes that men often “performed” in public spaces while women did so in domestic settings. In her work on Haketia, the Judeo-Spanish variety of Morocco, Paloma (2015) similarly considers the role of gender in regard to power-differentials. That is, while men often utilized their language(s) in the public sphere, women have been able to negotiate power in their communities and preserve cultural, linguistic, and religious practices in the private sphere by transmitting oral traditions, especially by song.

Other forms of literary orality in Ladino involve folklore. In Alexander (2007), one finds legends, ethical tales, fairy tales, and humorous tales. Stories (konsejas or kuentos) of the fictional character Djoha abound in the latter category and continue to be a source of inspiration for literary creation in Ladino (e.g. Koen-Sarano, 2018; Salti, 2022). Djoha himself is adapted into Sephardic folklore from the character Nasreddin Hodja known in many Muslim countries. In Sephardic folklore, one often finds instances of the Ladino refranero, or sayings and proverbs in the language. While thousands of proverbs have been documented in writing (Bardavid & Fender, 2006a; 2006b), as folklore, speakers have relied on oral transmission to pass them down from one generation to the next.