Judeoespañol: How Spain's Lost Language Reveals the Country's Multicultural Identity
Henry Bell
Judeoespañol: How Spain's Lost Language Reveals the Country's Multicultural Identity
Henry Bell
Embedded Files
Henry Bell
In recent years, academia has revealed the problematic nature of history, both in terms of its reliability and the process of its formation. As the old adage goes, history is written by the victor – a statement that has proven to be increasingly true as more and more stories of marginalized groups are unearthed in an effort to differentiate the narratives put forth by those in power from the real, often repressed events that make up the real history of our world. In truth, the leaders of most countries, both in the past and present, perpetuate narratives that seek to put the country in question in a positive light – something that is often achieved by excluding the darker chapters of that country’s history. This can be seen in the United States, where subjects like slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans were not covered in public curriculum until the late 20th and early 21st century.
Worse yet, several countries still fail to acknowledge their complete histories in an effort to maintain national pride and avoid criticism. Spain, one of such countries, is still affected by the exclusionary principles of the Spanish Inquisition, resulting in a population that lacks a fully realized knowledge of its own history – specifically regarding the eras before Catholic rule, when a variety of different religious and ethnic communities left an indelible mark on the Iberian Peninsula that is still visible today. One of these communities, the Sephardic Jews that occupied Spain from the eighth century until the Inquisition, even developed its own language. The story of Ladino, known in academic circles as “judeoespañol” or Judeo-Spanish, is emblematic of the thriving communities that have been erased from Spain’s history under the guise of nationalism and euro-centrism, ultimately leaving a significant piece missing from the country’s national identity that is still unknown to most of the world today.
Image protraying a portion of a parchment leaf with Hebrew incriptions. Curiously, this leaf incorporates a text from the Prophets, later used as a binding waste.
Historically, Hebrew is regarded to be the langauge of Israelites, Judeans and their ancestors. One of the oldest Hebrew inscriptions is the Dead Sea Scrolls, made of 981 texts
Photo: Provenance Online Project
The story of Ladino begins during the Muslim rule of Spain – a period known as Al-Andalus, when Muslims from northern Africa migrated to the Iberian Peninsula in 711 CE and established a prosperous society that became home to a significant number of Sephardic Jews. In his article titled “Ladino Lengua y Literatura,” author Moshé Lazar discusses the origin of Judeo-Spanish, and more importantly, the community that created it. He asserts that Ladino first emerged as a Spanish dialect that incorporated Hebrew words, but as time went on, the dialect evolved and became a unique language (17). According to Lazar, one of the first written instances of Ladino can be observed in translations of the Old Testament, which he uses to demarcate the periods in which Ladino was a dialect versus a fully-fledged language (17). Lazar continues to write that the Jewish community in Spain wrote a variety of artistic works in Ladino, including plays, ballads, poems, and songs.
The presence of artistic works within the Jewish communities is significant in terms of Ladino’s place in Spain’s national identity. Throughout history, art has proven to be one of the most defining aspects of a given nation or region in terms of identity. As Francis Fukuyama writes in an article for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
"National identity begins with a shared belief in the legitimacy of the country's political system [...] But national identity also extends into the realm of culture and values. It consists of the stories that people tell about themselves: where they came from, what they celebrate, their shared historical memories, and their expectations about what it takes to become a genuine member of the community."
Wood engraving by Bocort after H.D. Linton. Photo: Europeana
An auto de fé of the Spanish Inquisition and the execution of sentences by burning heretics on the stake in a market place.
By creating works of art that were both reflective of the period and Jewish community itself, the Jews of that era contributed to Spanish culture, and therefore, according to Fukuyama, made themselves a part of Spain’s national identity. Further, ignoring that contribution perpetuates a narrative that Spain has always been an exclusively Christian country. This narrative originated in the period of Spain’s history that directly followed Al-Andalus: La Reconquista and the Spanish Inquisition.
La Reconquista, meaning “the reconquest” in Spanish, marks the period in which Spain was forcibly recaptured by the Catholic Monarchs. With the Muslim rule completely destroyed and Catholic power fully restored, the Inquisition began –a crucial period in Spain’s history, especially for the Jews. In an effort to rid the country of “heretics” – or, more accurately, non-Christians – the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established to cast out anyone who did not fit the country’s new commitment to Christian purity. This included any practicing Muslims or Jews, and more importantly, it included the conversos - a portion of the Jewish population that converted to Catholicism to avoid prosecution. As Rachel Goodman writes in her article on Ladino for the SIT Graduate Institute, “The remaining Jewish population was now faced with a terrible dilemma: convert and possibly face the Inquisition; flee, penniless, for shores unknown; or remain with a price on their head” (13). This dilemma proved to be a fatal one for the Sephardim in Spain. Many fled the country in search of a better life elsewhere, while many remained and faced the consequences.
The Jews who fled Spain during the Inquisition make up a very important group, especially for the growth and proliferation of Judeo-Spanish. This group is known as the Diaspora, and in many cases, these Jews brought Judeo-Spanish to the wide variety of new countries they decided to settle in, especially Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Once there, the Sephardim once again became a meaningful piece of those societies by sharing their language and tradition with the locals. “The movement of the Sephardim to many parts of the world had created a language whose existence depended on both segregation from and adoption of the local languages,” Goodman continues. “This duality led to variances in vocabulary and sound of Ladino depending upon the speaker’s origin. Linguistic elements come from Italian, French, Turkish, Greek, Balkan languages, and to a lesser degree, English” (16).
Map of the Jewish expulsions and migrations in European territories between the 12th and 16 centuries.
Photo: Eceran
However, a strictly historical view of Judeo-Spanish’s place in Spain’s national identity begs the question: If Ladino became part of many other country’s identities, why should it be part of Spain’s? To answer this question, we must return to Fukuyama’s definition in combination with an analysis of the modern state of Ladino. Fukuyama’s definition specifies that part of national identity stems from “the stories people tell about themselves” and “where they came from.” In the case of Ladino, this means that the Jews that were expelled from Spain still carried the stories and traditions that the Jewish community developed there. Even in the new countries they migrated to, the Jews were not making themselves part of another nation’s identity, but instead spreading Spain’s through stories, and most importantly, language. Judeo-Spanish, Spanish, and Spain are inextricably linked – and wherever the language is spoken, Spain’s national identity is being spread.
Unfortunately, the passage of time has made Ladino speakers increasingly scarce, bringing the language to the brink of extinction. Tracey K. Harris, author of “The State of Ladino Today,” estimated in 2011 that there were very few native speakers of the language left, and that the majority of those who still spoke it were over the age of seventy – meaning that the number of native speakers left is likely even lower (1). Harris attributes the steady decline of Judeo-Spanish speakers to a variety of factors, such as the Holocaust, migratory movements by Sephardim after World War II, and intermarriage with non-Ladino speakers (1). Harris also points out that there is a stigma towards the language in modern society that accelerates assimilation by Ladino-speaking Jews and forces parents to teach their children more common languages: “Ladino was generally compared unfavorably and was considered an inferior form of speech […] These negative associations combined with pressures to assimilate into the Israeli and American cultures have discouraged the transmission of Ladino by parents,” (2).
Salom, a Jewish Ladino-language weekly published in Turkey, launched in 1947, just a few years after more than half of the world's Ladino speakers died in the Holocaust
Photo: Courtesy of Salom
Despite the fact that Sephardic culture is doing better than every globally, it still seems that there is no place for Judeo-Spanish to flourish as a language that belonged to “a nation without a state […] a people sojourning in the homelands of others.” (Goodman 22). This is perhaps the most poignant and powerful reason as to why Spain should accept Judeo-Spanish as a part of its national identity and culture. If Spain does not reclaim the language of the people it once banished, the language could be lost forever. In addition, Spain is the birthplace of Ladino, and embracing the language would be emblematic of Spain’s acceptance of its multicultural history. On an optimistic note, there are several initiatives in other countries that are gaining traction in terms of reviving Ladino, and if Spain were to accept and host such initiatives, Ladino could survive both as a language and a cultural artifact. In addition, there are still newspapers published in Ladino today, such as Turkey’s El Amaneser.
El Amaneser was founded in 2003 to replace Şalom, another Ladino newspaper that switched its publication to Turkish. Currently, El Amaneser is the only newspaper in the world published primarily in Ladino (others include sections, but not entire papers). The paper is mainly read in Istanbul, but there are Ladino speakers that enjoy the paper on a global scale. El Amaneser is an example of how Spain’s multicultural background and history persists today. The fact that Ladino, a language spoken by a small community of Jews during the Muslim rule of Spain, still lives today is in itself miraculous – and it is in that multiculturalism that Spain should take pride in this lost piece of the nation’s history. This sentiment is reflected in a 2008 article written by Klara Perahya titled “El Judeo-Espanyol’es mas ke unmedyo de komunikasyon,” meaning “Judeo-Spanish is more than a mode of communication.”
In the article, Perahya argues that Judeo-Spanish transcends its status as a language in terms of cultural and historical importance. Perahya calls Ladino “una pajina de Istorya,” or “a page of history” – a history that is directly linked to multiculturalism. She claims that Ladino is not important because of its tie to Spain, or its origin during Al-Andalus. Perahya stipulates that Ladino is significant culturally because of the phonetic diversity the language gained during the diaspora: “La avla Sefardi no es echa solo de palavras Kas-tilyanas, Ebreas, Arameanas, Arabas, Portugezas, Gregas, Turkas, Italyanas, Fransezas ets..ets..., la avla sefardi es tambyen echa de todas las palav-rikas utilizadas, munchas vezes inventadas por el puevlo, por la madre djudia,” (2). In the quote, Perahya states that Judeo-Spanish was not just made by Spaniards, Israelis, Armenians, Arabs, the Portuguese, Greeks, Turks, Italians, or the French, but that its rich vocabulary came from the villages and the sayings of those who lived in them.
Here Perahya reaches the heart of her argument – she sees Judeo-Spanish as a symbol of those on the fringes of society and a rallying cry of those who have been forgotten and oppressed. Further, she directly challenges the stigma Goodman mentioned in her article regarding Ladino as a “broken” language. Perahya sees the language’s many contradictions and idiosyncrasies as “color” that represents the languages diverse and far-reaching roots. Perahya’s idea that multiculturalism gives Ladino strength as a language rather than weakness is central to both the revival of Ladino and the language’s origin centuries ago during Al-Andalus. The Inquisition was created in order to eliminate multiculturalism from Spain and the original speakers of Judeo-Spanish. Yet, in doing so, the Jewish community was able to spread across Europe and Asia, incorporating itself into a variety of countries and cultures. As Perahya notes, this diversity may be responsible for the longevity of Ladino, and it may also present a solution for how to save it.
If Ladino is to reintroduce itself as a language, or at the very least become a more well-known part of Spain’s history, it needs to draw upon its multicultural past. This is exactly what Professor Kirschen did in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Kirschen was having a hard time generating interest in Ladino courses in person, but when he made his classes “open to all age ranges” and “not just for traditional students,” he was blown away by the number of students that wanted to enroll. This speaks to the strength in diversity that Perahya wrote about. By teaching Ladino, a language that affected so many generations and cultures, to a wider group of people, Kirschen was able to get more students to enroll in his class. Further, Kirschen remains hopeful for the future of the language: “We are now able to bring Ladino into the households of so many people around the world. It doesn’t matter if you are in a Sephardic community or if you have a car, as long as you have access to the internet at some point, you can engage in learning with this community” (Klein).
However, if Judeo-Spanish is truly going to become a more common language once again, Spain needs to take the same approach to multiculturalism that Kirschen and Perahya have. Unfortunately, the echoes of the Inquisition still reverberate through Spain today – and most of the storied nation’s inhabitants are unaware of Al-Andalus, let alone the Jewish communities that thrived during the period and the language they spoke. In order for Ladino to become a true part of Spain’s national identity, as it should be, this lack of awareness on the part of its citizens needs to be ameliorated through education and a paradigm shift in the country’s perception of its history – which is undoubtedly linked to the Jews themselves. While this is a tall task, it is certainly not impossible. In recent years, the country has expressed interest in supporting Jewish causes, and if this continues to happen, the birthplace of Ladino may become the center of its revitalization.
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