Message from the Editor -on the Legacy of Rhodes

The Holocaust Memorial of Rhodes, located in the courtyard of the old Jewish neighborhood (La Djuderia)

As editor of La Djente, it is especially meaningful to introduce this issue dedicated to the Sephardic Jewish community of Rhodes, a community whose story feels deeply personal to me, even four generations later.

Jewish Rhodes first existed to me as a far away dream.

A word in Ladino about the kehila. A recipe of bourikitas my grandmother made without measurements. Stories about “la djuderia.” Names like Franco, Cadranel, Malki, Hasson and Soriano that seemed to belong to another world.

I grew up thousands of miles away from the island my family once called home. And yet, somehow, Rhodes shaped me before I even understood what it was.

Four generations later, I find myself thinking about what it means to inherit a place you never truly lived in, but somehow still remember.

For many Sephardim of my generation, Rhodes exists first through fragments. Through sayings and stories passed between languages. Through photographs with no labels. We inherited memories that were not entirely ours, but somehow became part of us anyway.

My family’s journey carried us far from Rhodes, to the Congo, from South Africa to Canada. Along the way, pieces were preserved and pieces were lost. Like many younger Sephardim, I grew up hearing Ladino phrases without fully speaking the language myself. I understood that my family was “Sephardic,” but it took years for me to fully grasp that this identity was tied to a real community that once existed, with its own streets, schools, synagogues, humour, traditions and rhythms of life.

That understanding changed when I began learning Ladino. What started as language classes quickly became a reconnection to an entire Sephardic world that had nearly disappeared within a few generations. Suddenly, through the Sephardic Brotherhood’s online classes, young Sepharadim scattered across continents were finding one another again. People from Canada, Israel, the United States, Latin America, Turkey, and Greece were coming together to preserve a language and culture many feared would vanish.

Our grandparents preserved Ladino around kitchen tables and in courtyards. My generation preserves it through Zoom classes, Instagram videos, WhatsApp groups and digital archives. Projects like Ladino with Lex, my personal Instagram archive of Sephardic culture, began from a simple fear that too much was being lost too quickly. But they also grew from a realization that preservation itself can evolve. The tools may be different, but the instinct is the same: to carry our stories forward.

Serving as editor of La Djente feels deeply connected to that responsibility. Sephardic communities have always relied on storytelling to preserve memory across exile and migration. For centuries, Rhodes lived because our families carried it with them, in language, recipes, music, customs and family histories. This issue is part of that same effort, to document, preserve and celebrate the richness of Rhodesli Jewish life for future generations.

When I finally visited Rhodes, I realized I was not discovering the island for the first time. In many ways, I was returning to something that had already been quietly living inside me. Walking through the old Jewish quarter, hearing Ladino spoken again, meeting Holocaust survivor Sami Modiano, and standing outside the homes where my family once lived transformed Rhodes from something far away into reality.

Jewish Rhodes is the story of a community that survived expulsions, migration, war and dispersal across the globe. Four generations later, descendants of Rhodeslis are still speaking Ladino, cooking the same recipes, singing the same melodies and asking one another, “Ijo de ken sos tu?”  - whose child are you?

Perhaps that is what Jewish Rhodes means to me now. A reminder that identity can survive oceans, languages and generations as long as someone is willing to remember, preserve and continue telling the story.