Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, carries traces of the communities that spoke it across the Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean and later Australia. Its vocabulary…
Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish tongue carried across the Mediterranean by Sephardic Jews after 1492, still pulses through the prayers, lullabies, and kitchen…
A kippah is the small head covering worn by many Jewish men and boys, and by some women, as an expression of Jewish identity, reverence or religious practice.…
In Ladino, the word dulce can describe a sweet taste, a sugary treat, or a fruit preserve made slowly with sugar. This range may seem surprising to English…
Words often carry the history of the people who use them. The Judeo-Spanish word shapo, meaning “hat”, points to contact between Sephardic speakers and the…
Sephardic communities carried their music across the Mediterranean, from the Iberian Peninsula to the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, and eventually to cities as…
Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish tongue carried across the Mediterranean after the 1492 expulsions, has long been shaped by contact with the languages of its host…
Ainda. The small word carries the patience of centuries. Spoken in family kitchens, sung in romances, and recorded in dictionaries maintained by dispersed…
In Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino, meldar can be translated simply as “to read”. That English equivalent is useful, but it does not carry the full cultural weight of…
The Greek word pera, meaning "beyond," "across," or "over," carries a quiet weight in the vocabulary of Sephardic communities. Speakers of Judeo-Spanish, the…