| Ruben, it's hard to answer your question about "Sephardite community in
Israel and their language". The term "Sephardi community" does not have
a very precise meaning at all. However, it is safe to say that most
people who call themselves "Sephardim" have no connection whatsoever
with Ladino. "Sephardi" is often used to refer to anyone who comes from
a non-Eastern-European background. Numerically, Yemenites, Algerians,
Morrocans, Iraqis (for instance), all of whom are called "Sephardim",
far outnumber 'Sephardim with a Spanish/Ladino connection'. Those Sephardim
who speak a 'language of the exile' mostly speak Arabic or Judeo-Arabic.
Most Ladino-speaking Jews hail from Greece and Turkey.
They do not make a large community at all.
I don't know of any Ladino newspaper, or TV broadcast. I'm sure
there is a nightly radio news broadcast in Ladino. There are no
Ladino political parties. Currently, many Israeli political parties
are wooing the "Sephardi" vote, and many people attribute Begin's success
in wresting the leadership away from the Labor party (?10 years ago) to
his succesful wooing of the Sephardi vote. On the other hand, I don't
think there really is such a thing as the 'Sephardi vote' per se. As more
years pass, it becomes less and less rational to distinguish between
Israeli Jews on the basis of where their grandparents immigrated from...
Israeli Jews who speak Spanish generally do so because they were born
in South America. The Jewish communities of South America, in turn,
are mostly of Eastern-European origin. No Ladino there. (on the other hand,
South America is one of the hotbeds, such as it is, of Yiddish
literature in the post-war world).
|
| This may seem too simple of a "formula" for some, this is how I
distinguished between non-Askinazim in Israel.
It's true as Kathy states in .1 that most Jews of non-Askenazic
origin are referred to as "Sephardim" in Israel. After a while
this didn't make sense to me. I now usually refer to Jews from
Arab lands as "Mizrachim", i.e., "Orientals"(not to be confused
with Orientals from the Far East). People who are of Morrocan origin
to me are simply "Morrocaim", although many in this group could
be referred to as Sephardim.
Anyways this is beginning to sound a bit racial for me, you must
not forget the one common thread that all of us have, and that is
we are all Jews.
David
|