Without much fanfare, a seminal event in Judeo-Spanish history took place on March 17, 2021. Participating organizations from all over the world, including the Autoridad Nationala de Ladino i su Kultura, Sentro Kultural Sefarad, Los Shadarim, Ladinokomunita, the Sentro Sefaradi de Estambol and the Sentro Moshe Gaon, celebrated the Diya Mundial de Ladino - the International Ladino Day, with a large-scale poetry competition. Though poetry competitions are by no means new or even that rare in the Ladino-speaking world, this particular event was unprecedented both in the sheer number of collaborating organizations dedicated to the Ladino language, its international scope, and the large number of people who enthusiastically submitted their poetry for consideration.
It is also remarkable that these participants ran the gamut of experience in the language and included native ladinoavlantes, heritage speakers, language learners, and even linguists, researchers, and teachers of the language. The poetry too was extraordinarily diverse in content, theme, and style, accurately reflecting the stunning diversity of the global Sephardic diaspora. The event was also important because, all at once, a quantitative new output of Sephardic poetry was produced in the language. Though no new anthology has been published of all the new poems composed for the competition, such an edition would certainly be a much-needed and greatly celebrated addition to the body of Sephardic poetry and literature, and a welcome resource for artists, musicians, and poets of the Ladino language community.
The role and importance of new poetry in contemporary Sephardic life like those produced in 2021 is complex and multifaceted, and the pace of poetic output has only increased since then. These poets are not limited to a single generation but, like the competition above, come from all walks of life, embodying a new efflorescence of poetry in Judeo-Spanish. For many Sephardim, especially those who experienced the vicissitudes of the 20th Century either themselves or second-hand, new Ladino poetry serves as the vehicle in which to preserve Sephardic memory.
Matilda Koen-Sarano (b.1939), for example, author of over 31 books of folklore, poetry, songs, and memoirs. Her sung poem La Djoya (The Jewel) describes the poet walking into a dark jewelry store in Thessaloniki, where a red jewel that belonged to a Jewish victim of the Shoah in that city begs the poet to take it along with her so the memory of her owner may live. The poem closes with noche i diya mis pensadas stan tornando a Selanik; night and day, my thoughts return to Salonica.
Asher Amado, an Israeli author of books for children and adults, a prolific poet, and the first to be featured in our new Kantoniko de Poezia section explains that poetry for him captures the essence of Sephardic life both in the present and lost to the past that cannot be expressed any other way. “I publish my poetry both in Ladino and Hebrew. The reason that I write them in two languages is to give those that read them the opportunity to learn or to remember forgotten words or forgotten ideas. The poems that I write could be about our own times, or memories of days passed. They include moments of sorrow, moments of humor, descriptions of my surroundings, of nature and its beauty, of birds and rivers, but also poems about difficult periods and the many hardships of our people during the Shoah.” [Translated. Interview conducted in Ladino.]
Professor and musicologist Lindsey Christiansen, the late doyenne of poetry for song and a long time fixture at the American Academy of Teachers of Singing as well advisor and dear friend of the author at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, once remarked the first thing she would tell her students was that “Singers, unlike any other type of musician, have the honor and also the special responsibility of actually performing words.” Indeed, without a constant flow of new poetry to inform, inspire, and form the basis of song, the potential for new sung music is by default limited.
The creativity available for new song composition becomes bound to some extent by the breadth of the poetic corpus, and without a consistent flow of new poetry, songs that are able express new realities become finite. For songs in any language to grow and become reflective of their own time, they must be preceded by poetry or prose.
It is in this way that young poet-performers like Sarah Aroeste and Lily Henley, (both Sephardic Brotherhood Members) are also finding their voice in writing original poetry to set to music. For Henley, the unique narrative ability of the language lends itself to a musical expression and story-telling in a way that is deeply personal to her as she explores her own identity as a Sephardic Jew.
“There is so much depth and nuance in the unique expression, emotion, sound, and history which is carried in this language, and I see so much beauty in drawing upon that in the creation of something which feels authentic to me. A language can’t be kept alive without new creativity in the language. There are stories I can’t express as easily in another language, there are important people in my life who I would never have learned from if I were not excavating these worlds, and parts of myself which I would not understand.”
To Aroeste, the force behind several Ladino-language albums with original poetry as well as original children’s books in Ladino, the creation of new poetry is an essential key to maintain a future not only for the Judeo-Spanish language, but for Sephardic music and culture writ large. “When we think about Ladino preservation, both as a language and as a living culture that still binds Sephardim together today, we can’t only look backwards. We must also look forward. Writing new prose, poetry, and music in our language is the only way to maintain a future. I draw inspiration in my own work from a variety of sources, ranging from the poetry of Samuel Ha-Nagid to the stories passed down to me by my elders, to the laughter of my own children. In every poem I write, the pulse of Ladino and Sephardic history runs deeply from the past, but it also distinctly vibrates through today.”
Interested in publishing your own Ladino poetry? Submit your own works to us at info@sepharidcbrotherhood.com,, and we will do our best to publish your own unique contribution to the future of Ladino!
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