Sephardic Culture

Abstract

Following the expulsion decree issued in Spain in 1492, and fleeing persecutions by the Spanish and subsequently Portuguese Inquisitions, Sephardic Jews (Sepharad being the Hebrew term ascribed to the Iberian Peninsula since the Middle Ages) fled across the Mediterranean, where many settled in the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Until the 20th century, Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire (and successor states such as Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, etc.) kept their ancestral traditions and continued to speak a Spanish-based language—referred to as Judeo-Spanish, Judezmo, Spaniolit, and other names, serving as the primary vernacular of Sephardic Jews who trace their origins to the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th and 16th centuries—that incorporated linguistic elements not only from Hebrew, but also Turkish, Greek, and Arabic, as well as from the languages of European prestige, French and Italian. A wide-spanning oral culture as well as religious and secular literature (written in the Hebrew alphabet) developed in Ladino—declared by UNESCO an “endangered language” in 2002—and accompanied Sephardic Jews who left the crumbling Ottoman Empire during the 20th century and settled around the globe, notably in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas. There, they constituted a minority within the American Jewish community, encountered other Spanish-speaking populations, and increasingly adapted to American life. Today Ladino is a severely endangered language, spoken only by older generations. The multifaceted identities and experiences of Sephardic Jews challenge the boundaries of categories such as “Jewish,” “Latino,” and “Hispanic.” This article aims to direct the reader to key sources regarding the history, language, and culture of Ladino-speaking Jews. Since Sephardic history includes Conversos and Crypto-Jews, a heated controversy persists around who is a Jew and what methods were used to shape that identity from the 14th century to the present day, in Spain, the Americas (including the American Southwest), and elsewhere. The debates, including one rotating around Judith Neulamder, have been featured in ethnographic studies by scholars like Janet Jacobs and Seth Kunin, among others.