Sephardim are the descendants of the Jews expelled from the lands of the Iberian Peninsula in the years 1492-1498, who settled down in the Mediterranean basin. The identifying sign of the Sephardim has been, until the middle of the twentieth century, the language known as Jewish-Spanish. The history, identity and memory of the Sephardim in their Mediterranean dispersal are analysed by the author with a special reference to the Sephardi community of Jerusalem and to the cultural and social changes that characterized the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. However, because of the crucial changes related to modernization and the political circumstances that came into being at the turn of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, the Sephardim lost their unique identity.

Judeo-Spanish and the Making of a Community brings together scholars and activists from around the world, all of whom have participated in and presented original research at the annual ucLADINO Judeo-Spanish Symposia. This collection addresses a number of linguistic, historical, and cultural matters pertinent to the Sephardim in different lands from the fifteenth century to the present day. Essays in this volume reveal how Sephardim from various parts of the world – Turkey, the Balkans, Morocco, and the United States – culturally and linguistically position themselves among each other, among other Jews, and among their non-Jewish co-regionalists. Contributors explore how the rich history of the Sephardim has allowed for the development, maintenance, endangerment, and even revitalization of the Judeo-Spanish language(s).

The 12 articles of this volume show the many facets of contact in al-Andalus and Medieval Iberia, reminding us of how contact influenced art and learning in a wide range of fields: politics, science, philosophy, music and religion; offering views of how contact between societies affects both language, stereotype and assimilation; examining how war and conflict (re)define the representation of ideas, places and people; and demonstrating how representations changed over time through contact and conflict. Lessons of the past apply today as al-Andalus captures the modern imagination and cultures continue to come into contact across borders which either allow fluid diffusion of ideas or block passage.

Latin America has been a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution from 1492, when Sepharad Jews were expelled from Spain, until well into the twentieth century, when European Jews sought sanctuary there from the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. Vibrant Jewish communities have deep roots in countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala, and Chile—though members of these communities have at times experienced the pain of being "the other," ostracized by Christian society and even tortured by military governments. While commonalities of religion and culture link these communities across time and national boundaries, the Jewish experience in Latin America is irreducible to a single perspective. Only a multitude of voices can express it. This anthology gathers fifteen essays by historians, creative writers, artists, literary scholars, anthropologists, and social scientists who collectively tell the story of Jewish life in Latin America. Some of the pieces are personal tales of exile and survival; some explore Jewish humor and its role in amalgamating histories of past and present; and others look at serious episodes of political persecution and military dictatorship. As a whole, these challenging essays ask what Jewish identity is in Latin America and how it changes throughout history. They leave us to ponder the tantalizing question: Does being Jewish in the Americas speak to a transitory history or a more permanent one?

"After expulsion from Spain in 1492, a large number of Spanish Jews (Sephardim) found refuge in lands of the Ottoman Empire. These Jews continued speaking a Spanish that, due to their isolation from Spain, developed independently in the empire from the various peninsular dialects. This language, called Judeo-Spanish (among other names), is the focus of Death of a Language, a sociolinguistic study describing the development of Judeo-Spanish from 1492 to the present, its characteristics, survival, and decline. To determine the current status of the language, Tracy K. Harris interviewed native Judeo-Spanish speakers from the sephardic communities of New York, Israel, and Los Angeles. This study analyzes the informants' use of the language, the characteristics of their speech, and the role of the language in Sephardic ethnicity." "Part I defines Judeo-Spanish, discusses the various names used to refer to the language, and presents a brief history of the Eastern Sephardim. The next part describes the language and its survival, first by examining the Spanish spoken by the Jews in pre-Expulsion Spain, and followed by a description of Judeo-Spanish as spoken in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the phonology, archaic features, new creations, euphemisms, proverbs, and foreign (non-Spanish) influences on the language. Finally, Harris discusses sociological or nonlinguistic reasons why Judeo-Spanish survived for four and one-half centuries in the Ottoman empire." "The third section of Death of a Language analyzes the present status and characteristics of Judeo-Spanish. This includes a description of the informants and the three Sephardic communities studied, as well as the present domains or uses of Judeo-Spanish in these communities. Current Judeo-Spanish shows extensive influences from English and Standard Spanish in the Judeo-Spanish spoken in the United States, and from Hebrew and French in Israel. No one under the age of fifty can speak it well enough (if at all) to pass it on to the next generation, and none of the informants' grandchildren can speak the language at all. Nothing is being done to ensure its perpetuation: the language is clearly dying." "Part IV examines the sociohistorical causes for the decline of Judeo-Spanish in the Levant and the United States, and presents the various attitudes of current speakers: 86 percent of the informants feel that the language is dying. A discussion of language and Sephardic identity from a sociolinguistic perspective comprises part V , which also examines Judeo-Spanish in the framework of dying languages in general and outlines the factors that contribute to language death. In the final chapter the author examines how a dying language affects a culture, specifically the role of Judeo-Spanish in Sephardic identity."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved