By Gefen Miller
Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish, is a language spoken by Sephardic Jews in more than 30 countries, including Israel. But most American Jews know little, if anything, about Ladino, which originated in Spain more than a millennium ago.
On Thursday night, Sept. 9, the Baltimore Jewish Council will offer “Ladino 101: Food, Phrases and Folklore,” an evening of learning and cultural exploration of the diasporic language — a mix of Castilian Spanish and Hebrew — and its contemporary connections.
The session will be led by Ethan Marcus, managing director of the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America in New York. The gathering will be held in the Pearlstone Boardroom of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore, at 5700 Park Heights Avenue.
Jmore recently caught up with Marcus, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in the Greek and Turkish Jewish communities of New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.
What will you discuss during your presentation?
I’m very excited to teach this kind of introduction to the Ladino language. As Yiddish is to Ashkenazim, Ladino is to Sephardim. It’s a fusion of old from Spain before the Inquisition, mixed with Hebrew and some Greek and Turkish, and even some French and Italian — a very deep, beautiful language.
Is there a large Sephardic community in the U.S?
New York was the regional hub [for Sephardim] about 100 years ago, on the Lower East Side, and there are still five cities in New York and another two in New Jersey where the descendants of Jews from Greek and Turkish heritage who arrived to the United States still live.
What exactly is the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America?
The Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America — also known as La Ermandad Sefaradi in Ladino — was originally founded in 1916, initially as a mutual aid and burial society.
It started up from an immigrant community, Jews from the city of Salonika in what’s today Greece, coming to the United States with no Social Security, no welfare state, no Medicare, no Medicaid. Where does one go? They go to their peer group, or what was called a landsmenschaften in the Ashkenazic community. Since 1916, [the brotherhood] would assist people with finding work, night classes in English, housing, job placements, etc.
Over time, it’s really grown to be a national umbrella institution for the Ladino-speaking Greek and Turkish/Balkan-supported community in the United States.
What services does the brotherhood offer today?
It does everything from the ‘cradle to the grave.’ We are essentially an umbrella institution with 15 affiliated congregations around the country, with our biggest hubs in New York, Seattle and south Florida. We have a scholarship program donating roughly $60,000 a year for high school, college and graduate school students in our community. We still have an arm that deals with burials and those people in times of need.
We even have a youth movement we launched a few years ago [Bivas-the Ladino High School Club of America].
How did you become involved in the brotherhood?
My grandfather was born in a little town outside Salonika called Veria and immigrated to the United States, to New York, with his family. There he met my grandmother, who was of Turkish heritage, and then they had my father, who was born and raised on the Lower East Side.
[My grandfather] was a [brotherhood] member, my father was a member and I am a member of the institution. As I got older, I became more interested in becoming actively involved. I joined the national central council, the board of directors, and [the managing director role] kind of fell into my lap, a little bit after a stint in Greece when I enrolled under a scholarship program.
What are the challenges of your job?
The brotherhood is, in many ways, sort of 100-years-old going on 10, in a sense that it’s a legacy institution. For many years, it was primarily led by nonprofit volunteers, and I’m essentially one of the first professional staff now with a team of three professionals.
It is a kind of modernized institution, bringing us into the 21st century with how we engage with membership, how we deal with young people, how we make Sephardic identity relevant to a third-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-generation community that’s removed from our immigrant heritage.
What’s your objective?
As a third-generation member, God willing, I will one day have children myself and I want to make sure that they and my grandchildren one day have a community they can call their own. It’s very rewarding to me to see that I’m laying the foundation for that success.
Something else that’s very rewarding to me personally is seeing new members when they join us, how they react when they find out there’s this whole Sephardic community they never knew about. They’ve always felt isolated. You have a random member, let’s say in Baltimore, who doesn’t really have a Sephardic or Greek or Turkish community there. This whole network [makes them] feel like [they are] no longer alone.
What is your experience in Sephardic Jewish education?
Somewhat formal, somewhat informal. I was honored to get a Fulbright [Program] fellowship studying in Greece for a year. I was doing research on the unique cultural customs of the Jews of Greece, particularly Roman Jews. I did that for six-to-nine months with the chief rabbi of Athens.
I also worked as a director of Sephardic Adventure Camp, which is our affiliated summer camp, and designed their three-year strategic curriculum focused on Sephardic education, experiential education. For example, we created [at the camp] mini-lesson plans and programs around the experience of escaping from Spain [during the Inquisition]. It was like a relay race where the kids would basically interact as if they were fleeing Spain.
Why do you feel it’s so important to teach Sephardic culture in the U.S.?
Sephardic culture and traditions are incredibly valuable, incredibly valuable, to the general Jewish community. Our [Jewish identity] is not just matzoh-balls-and-gefilte-fish. There is so much more. You only get half a picture of Judaism if you’re only looking at a portion of it. We have a very rich history.
Not only that, we have a very rich Torah tradition, a tradition I think is particularly valuable for the modern era. [Sephardim] don’t choose the ‘liberal’ or ‘Orthodox’ or ‘Conservative’ labels. We don’t try to force ourselves into a box. We are who we are as Sephardim — ‘Rambam’s middle path.’ I think that’s very valuable, especially in the 21st century where people feel pulled to extremes. They feel like they have to choose one or the other.
The Sephardic [approach is], ‘No, you can be a modern, engaged, person in modern society with all the challenges there and also be traditional in a sense of keeping to your identity, your Torah and your culture.’
For information about the Ladino 101 seminar, visit baltjc.org/event/ladino101-food-phrases-folklore/.
Gefen Miller is a Jmore editorial staff intern.
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