Judeo-Spanish

The present chapter outlines the historical development of lexicography in Judezmo, the traditional language of the Sephardic Jews of the former Ottoman Empire and its successor states, and Ḥaketía, the language of the Sephardim of Spanish Morocco. After notes on the thematic limitations of the chapter and on present-day Judezmo orthography, introductory notes are provided on Judezmo and Ḥaketía. The developmental stages of Judezmo and Ḥaketía lexicography are then sketched out, culminating in an overview of electronic corpora and contemporary Judezmo lexicography online, discussion of current issues in Judezmo lexicography, and a look at prospects for the future.

The linguistic history of Belgrade, as well as of the most parts of the Balkans in general, consists of partial and sporadic accounts of the linguistic practices of different ethnic and religious groups (Tsintsars, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Serbs, Sephardic Jews, etc.), which coexisted in these territories for centuries. (Socio)linguistic studies of the Balkans have failed so far in providing a holistic and systematic reconstruction and analysis of its linguistic history and of the long-lasting multilingualism/ bilingualism from the past and its consequences. As the language of the Sephardim was very often neglected in the above-mentioned studies, the aim of this paper is to indicate some issues related to the linguistic history of Judeo-Spanish, and, especially, the need for placing it in a broader Belgrade/Balkan context. In addition, some preliminary guidelines are suggested for sociolinguistic analysis of linguistic history of Belgrade/Balkans in the future.

Mucho se ha hablado y publicado acerca del cainismo español, pero muy poco es lo que se ha profundizado en las raíces de tal evocación. Esta idea es, básicamente, el motor de este ensayo: rastrear la sombra del fratricida bíblico, proyectada en nuestra historia más temprana.
Planteado así el arranque, caí bien pronto en la cuenta de que el resultado de mis investigaciones podía servir, además, para abordar un espacio poco explorado o inexistente en la literatura interpretativa sobre la Biblia. Se echaba en falta un texto, accesible a un público muy amplio, que destacara el valor literario e ideológico de la Biblia, sobre todo de la Biblia hebrea, cuyo peso, tal y como se sustenta en este libro, ha sido tan grande en la narrativa histórica hispana.
El ensayo se divide en dos partes: la primera aborda los diferentes rostros del fratricida, así como la trayectoria literaria de la figura de Caín dentro de la literatura bíblica, canónica y apócrifa. El recuerdo de este personaje sirve como excusa y como guía para apreciar el virtuosismo de obras maestras de la literatura antigua como Génesis o el Libro de Samuel; en siguientes capítulos ilumina igualmente la suerte de transformaciones que, en lo religioso y en lo literario, experimentó la literatura bíblica a través de los siglos. En la segunda parte abordamos la sombra oblicua de esa personificación del fratricidio por excelencia que es Caín; muy especialmente en las narraciones de la historia de España. Desde Isidoro de Sevilla (descendiente directo de la tradición adversus iudaeos de la patrística latina) hasta apologetas como Ximénez de Rada o López de Ayala, la tradición cronística hispana aprovechó aquella temprana sombra de Caín para armar narrativas con la capacidad de avalar el desprecio a otras comunidades religiosas o explicar fratricidios con el apoyo de las Escrituras.

Francisco Peña Fernández es profesor titular de la Universidad de British Columbia en Canadá donde dirige el programa de World Literatures and Intercultural Communications e imparte cursos de mitología comparada, literatura bíblica e historia de las religiones. Sus ámbitos de investigación son la literatura bíblica -canónica y apócrifa-, las relaciones culturales, religiosas y políticas entre el cristianismo medieval y el judaísmo y el fenómeno del anti-judaísmo cristiano. En la actualidad dirige un proyecto interdisciplinar de investigación (The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography: A Digital Humanities Project) financiado por el Consejo de Investigación de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de Canadá (SSHRC)

En este trabajo se presentan las condiciones generales tanto del mantenimiento del judeoespañol como de su desplazamiento por el serbio. El mantenimiento fue un fenómeno lingüístico y cultural durante el cual esta lengua se conservó por siglos casi intacta entre los sefardíes de Belgrado, mientras que el desplazamiento fue un proceso de una duración mucho menor, que se inicia en la comunidad sefardí de Belgrado en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y se prolonga  hasta la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El modelo aplicado al fenómeno estudiado se basa principalmente en la teoría de dominios de lenguaje. La situación sociolingüística y sociocultural del judeoespañol de Belgrado ofrece un paradigma del ciclo de vida de esta variedad lingüística en los Balcanes.

The paper shows an image and functions of Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish languages among Jewish Diaspora groups – the Balkan Sephardim and the Ashkenazim (the Ostjuden group) – in the period from the beginning of the twentieth century until the outbreak of World War II. The study is based on the articles from Jewish weeklies, magazines and newspapers from prewar Bosnia and Hercegovina and from Germany/Poland. It demonstrates a double-sided attitude towards the languages. On the one hand – an image of the languages as determinants of Jewish identity. Touching on this theme, the authors of the paper also try to highlight the images of Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish and as determinants in a narrower sense – of the Sephardi/Ashkenazi identity in that period. On the other hand, the paper shows a tendency to treat the languages as " corrupted " and " dying " languages, and as factors slowing down the assimilation of Jewish groups and also as an obstacle for Zionist ideologies.

El presente trabajo trata del papel que la mujer sefardí desempeñó en el proceso de mantenimiento/desplazamiento del judeoespañol que tuvo lugar en los Balcanes desde mediados del siglo XIX hasta la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Nuestro propósito ha sido ofrecer una (re)interpretación más sólida del papel social de la mujer sefardí en el proceso mencionado ya que éste, hasta ahora, no ha recibido suficiente atención en los estudios sociolingüísticos tradicionales. Partimos de varios postulados de la sociolingüística crítica, que nos proporcionan establecer relaciones entre la variación discursiva y el poder social, y nos aprovechamos, al mismo tiempo, de unas proposiciones de la antropología cognitiva y de la antropología de la mujer que se refieren a los motivos cognitivos y a la organización social basada en ellos.

This article is basically an interview with Kelly Benoudis Basílio (born in Alcazarquivir --El-Ksar el Kebir--, Morocco, 1944), with the intention of discovering the context of the oral poetry collection (romancero and other poetic texts) known by her late mother and other late members of her family. They were Sephardic Jews, living for centuries in Morocco, and their language was Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). The repertoire of this familly was published in the same book where this article was included.

Convocatoria / Call for papers.
Monográfico: Confluencias, intersecciones y desplazamientos en la cultura sefardí
Para enviar las propuestas: [email protected]
Editoras: Alessia Cassani (Università degli Studi di Genova); Agnieszka August-Zarębska (Uniwersytet Wrocławski)

The present text represents a diachronic recreation of linguistic practices and linguistic attitudes of the speakers of Judeo-Spanish in Bitola and Skopje. In addition to offering a sociolinguistic analysis of data on language maintenance and shift, its purpose is also to account for these two phenomena. 
Our corpora consists of diverse manuscripts and published historical records on the Sephardim of Bitola and Skopje, such as official documents and articles from periodicals and commemorative volumes published by Balkan Jewish communities and their associations.
Language practices are analyzed within the ‘language domain’ model of language shift designed by Fishman (1964; 1991; 1997, etc.), which takes into account not only linguistic aspects of language use, but also concepts of ethnicity, ideology and symbolic values of minority languages and standard language cultures that the Sephardim came into contact with in the second half of the 19th century. In Bitola and Skopje, French standard language culture exercised significant influence among the richer Sephardic families through the presence of the Alliance Israelite educational network which insisted on the importance and relevance of French and Francophone culture among the Macedonian Sephardim (Lebl, 2008: 147). Thus, a sharp contrast was developed between the traditional way of life which insisted on the maintenance of Judeo-Spanish and the modernity introduced by the Alliance.
The fact that Macedonia remained a part of the Ottoman Empire until 1913, explains a slower pace of modernization of all the ethnic groups living in its territory. Furthermore, poverty and overall socio-economic hardship of Sephardic communities in Macedonia made it even more difficult for them to take part in the cultural and other changes based upon the model of Western European countries. Consequently, Judeo-Spanish in Macedonia was maintained longer than in other parts of former Yugoslavia (particularly in Belgrade and in Sarajevo). In other words, a language shift continuum can be identified, with Belgrade and Bitola on its two ends (the Belgrade community being the most progressive, and the Bitola community the most conservative one), and with Sarajevo and Skopje occupying the in-between points of the continuum.

During the Last Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times the Kingdom of Valencia -in the Crown of Aragon- lived bloody persecutions against the Jews (1391) and the complete expulsion of Jews (1492) and Muslims (1609). In the last decades of the 20th century, and now, the Land of Valencia becomes the "scenario" of an Anti-catalanist xenophobia...

WITH A PDF OF PRESS ARTICLES (in Spanish language) OF PACO CERDÀ, VÍCTOR ROMERO, ETC.
(www.levante-emv.com)

http://www.levante-emv.com/valencia/2011/12/18/brutal-oficio-inquisicion/865945.html

http://www.levante-emv.com/comunitat-valenciana/2014/02/21/calvario-valenciano-judios/1082584.html
Acoso y expulsión medieval

http://www.levante-emv.com/valencia/2013/10/16/nobles-acataron-expulsion-moriscos-rentables/1041899.html

http://www.levante-emv.com/mercantil-valenciano/2013/05/13/cuentas-moriscos/997534.html

http://www.levante-emv.com/comunitat-valenciana/2014/02/19/moriscos-reclaman-derecho-nacionalidad-espanola/1081375.html?utm_medium=rss

http://www.levante-emv.com/comunitat-valenciana/2011/05/08/invisible-blaverismo/805087.html

In Judezmo, as in other Jewish languages, elements of Hebrew and Aramaic have always played an important role in the creation of satire. The article explores some of the ways in which such elements lie at the core of satirical writing in rabbinical and secular writing in Judezmo.

Max Weinreich used the term yídishlekh to describe the traditional, 'Jewishly patterned' style of writing in Yiddish. Weinreich illustrated this style by comparing Mendele Moykher Sforim's 'Jewishly-styled' 1884 Yiddish translation of Leo Pinsker's Autoemanzipation (Berlin 1882) with the original German-language text. The present article demonstrates that in Judezmo as well as Yiddish, writers have consciously used 'Jewish styling,' and its converse, in the diverse literary genres they cultivated from the Middle Ages into the early twentieth century. However, as a result of somewhat divergent social, political, and ideological trends in the Judezmo as opposed to Yiddish speech communities later in the twentieth century, Yiddish writers today prefer to incorporate features of 'Jewish styling' in their writing, while Judezmo writers tend to reject them.