#judeo italian

[spacelazarwolf]

i had my first judeo-italian class today! it was cut short bc the professor had to leave early but i have a good feeling abt this class.

[charlesreeza]

Frescos painted by Agostino Scilla in 1657 adorn the ceiling of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at the Cathedral of Syracuse, Sicily. The panels depict Elijah and the angel; Habakkuk bringing bread to Daniel in the lions' den; and explorers with grapes from the Promised Land. The back wall shows Moses and the burning bush; and Jacob about to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

Despite his artistic achievements, Agostino Scilla is better remembered as a paleontologist and pioneer in the study of fossils. In 1670 he published his book Vain Speculation Undeceived by Sense in which he promoted a scientific understanding of fossils in contrast to fantastic Biblical and divine interpretations.

Photos by Charles Reeza

[transmascpetewentz]

Use any definition of "speak" that you'd like. This poll is just for fun.

[hero-israel]

Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, Romaniyot, Judeo-Italian, Krymchak... No Jews have been subjected to genocide and the destruction of culture and language, right. That wasn't a motivator for the creation of Israel, right.

Just more Europeans endlessly colonizing the Middle East and fetishizing one side of its totally unrelated conflicts to ACTUALLY be about themselves.

I've said it before - some of the absolute worst, most poisonous fantasy-based takes on I/P come in particular from Ireland and South Africa. Because when you are horribly oppressed by your neighbors for centuries, and then the oppression mostly ends but your neighbors are still your neighbors and you never get closure or restitution or anything, it can be hard or dangerous to blame your neighbors but it's very easy to blame the Jews. Like people who don't solve the problems of a bad home life but instead turn to drugs - it's commonly, mundanely human, a very understandable bad coping strategy. It doesn't become "true" just because of how common it is.

More on the antisemitic shit you hear from Ireland in particular:

[mariacallous]

In recent days, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has capitulated to the far-right anti-immigration agenda of Marine Le Pen. In July, in an electoral pact with the left, he sought a firewall against her. Now he has turned rightwards, giving her an effective veto over prime minister Michel Barnier’s new government.

By the end of the month, the Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ), founded by two former members of the SS, Anton Reinthaller and Friedrich Peter, is expected to form an anti-immigration,pro-Russian government. It will cement a new hard-right axis across Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, and more importantly, Italy, where step by step the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni (who met Keir Starmer on Monday), is accused of taking control of the press and the judiciary.

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has just won the east German regional elections in Thuringia and came second in Saxony. This is despite Germany’s domestic intelligence agency listing the AfD in three states as an “extremist” organisation, reflecting concerns about the Holocaust denial and links to far-right political violence of some of its members – and their invoking of banned Nazi slogans, for which the party’s Thuringian leader, Björn Höcke, has twice been found guilty in German courts.

But while Germany’s centre-right opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, who last year supported coalitions with the AfD in local government, has now refused to enter any national or regional coalition with the AfD, he has come closer to much of its anti-immigration agenda. He now wants “to talk about the issue of repatriation” of existing residents.

Now Höcke is openly mocking what he calls the “dumb firewall” against him, forecasting that it will not last. And last week the German coalition government reacted to the AfD’s success by tightening control of its bordersin an effort to curb irregular migration.

Another lurch rightward came with the decision last month by the Dutch health minister, a member of Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party, to refuse requests from African countries for urgent help in the fight against mpox, even when the Dutch stockpile runs to 100,000 boxes of unused vaccines – many of which will pass their use-by date next year.

The spectre haunting Europe is not communism, as Karl Marx once wrote, but far-right extremism. And not much is left of the cordon sanitaire that was to keep out the far right. Europe now has seven governments with hard-right parties in control or in coalition, with Austria likely to be next, as once-immovable barriers to contamination are swept aside by centre-right appeasers.

“Breaking point” was the slogan on a poster that Nigel Farage deployed in 2016 during the Brexit referendum campaign, portraying bearded and dark-skinned migrants appearing to march in droves towards us. The exact same photograph was later replicated in Hungary, with the caption changed from “Breaking point” to “Stop”.

Similar slogans include “Stop the invasion” (“Stop invasione”), used by Matteo Salvini’s Italian League party; and “Close the borders” (“Grenzen dicht”), adopted by German far-right groups the AfD and Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West).

A few years ago, when the now-imprisoned former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon attempted to form a global coalition of anti-globalists, he managed to herd together a number of Europe’s rightwing leaders, from Nigel Farage to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. He was involved in setting up an “Academy for the Judeo-Christian West” in Italy. And Trump’s “America first” Republican party is now one of many to adopt the “my country first” slogan.

Spain’s far-right Vox party has used “Primero lo nuestro. Primero los españoles”; Italy’s League, “Prima gli Italiani”; Hungary’s Fidesz party, “Nekünk Magyarország az első”; Germany’s AfD, “Unser Land zuerst”; Austria’s FPÖ, “Österreich zuerst”; and the Swiss People’s Party, “Die Schweiz zuerst”.

Outside Europe, “Önce Türkiye” (“Turkey First”) is promoted by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party. The far-right Japan First party marches under the banner of “日本第一” (“Japan first”). “India first” has been adopted by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party.

Variations on this theme include “Polska dla Polaków” (“Poland for Poles”),used by nationalists in Poland, Vox’s slogan “España viva” (“Long live Spain”), and “Brasil acima de tudo” (“Brazil above everything”), used by Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro.

In all, about 50 countries have already gone to the polls in 2024. “Fears that this year would reflect the global triumph of illiberal populism have so far been proved wrong,” Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy and the author of the End of History and the Last Man thesis, has concluded. “Democratic backsliding can and has been resisted in many countries.”

He can, of course, point to the return of Labour in Britain, the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission, the shift away from the far right in Poland and the setback for Modi in India. But the Polish and Indian results tell me no more than tolerance of rightwing extremism can ebb when the electorate finds out that the nationalist demagogues are good at exploiting grievances, but bad at eradicating them.

And so we must not forget what has happened in countries from Indonesia to Argentina, the knife-edge fight for power in the US and – what Fukuyama misses in Europe – the insidious surrender of the centre to far-right prejudice.

Of course, there are ways to frustrate the onward rush of rightwing populists. Not only did the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, defeat the right in national elections last year, but he has skilfully engineered a split between Spain’s centre-right People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox over the fate of vulnerable child migrants. Until July the two were in coalition in five key regions: Valencia, Aragón, Murcia, Extremadura and Castilla y León.

But it was not the centre-right PP that abandoned the extreme-right Vox; it was the extreme right that walked away from the centre right. And as long as the so-called moderates continue to play with fire – believing that by keeping their opponent close, they can eventually tame the beast – they will continue to lose. Sooner rather than later, the far-right poison will have to be countered with a progressive agenda focused on what matters to people most: jobs, standards of living, fairness and bridging the morally indefensible gap between rich and poor.

[fatehbaz]

Thinking about the Holocaust in Africa.

Here, European notions of anti-Blackness and antisemitism became intertwined.

There was a fusion between the dispossession and racism of European imperialism and colonization projects of the late nineteenth century, and the prison regimes imposed by European fascism in the early twentieth century.

Scholars Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aomar Boum have recently written much about the importance of recognizing the trauma of labor and internment camps in North Africa during the second world war.

And I want to express my gratitude for their work. I want to share some of what they’ve written in a couple of recent articles.

In their words: “Nazism in Europe was underlaid by an intricate matrix of racist, eugenicist and nationalist ideas. But the war – and the Holocaust – appears even more complex if historians take into account the racist and violent color wheel that spun in North Africa.” [1]

France's prison camps in North Africa were filled with Algerians, local Jews, deported European Jews, Eastern European refugees, domestic political dissidents from France, people fleeing fascist Spain, Moroccan residents, Senegalese subjects of French rule, other West Africans displaced by French occupation, and more.

The anti-Blackness and antisemitism that had fueled Europe's colonial expansion was finding new expression in fascist Europe.

---

Seems France is a central antagonist in the story of evolving approaches to empire, racism, and resource extraction.

After their 1940 alliance with the Nazis, the Vichy French government maintained technical control of French colonies across Africa. Beginning in 1940, the French government “alone built nearly 70 such camps in the Sahara.” [1] This was in addition to another six labor camps which the French government built in West Africa (in Senegal, Guinea, and Mali).

---

By the beginning of the twentieth century, French-influenced or -controlled territory in North Africa was home to around 500,000 Jews, many of whom had been living in the region for centuries or millennia, speaking many languages, “reflecting their many different cultures and ethnicities: Arabic, French, Tamazight – a Berber language – and Haketia, a form of Judeo-Spanish spoken in northern Morocco.” [1] The Vichy French government officially stripped North African Jews of formal citizenship and seized their assets.

Then, deporting residents of Europe and political dissidents in “early 1941, the Vichy authorities transferred hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees, including women and children, to the Saharan labor camps.” [2] Under French rule “in Algeria [...], it was estimated that 2,000-3,000 Jews were interned in camps [...] resulting in a total prisoner population of 15,000-20,000.” [2]  France pursued an “unrealized dream of the nineteenth century” [2]: the completion of the Mediterranean-Niger railroad line in the Sahara, a transportation route across the vast desert to connect the prosperous West African port of Dakar with the Mediterranean coast of Algeria.

Meanwhile the “Vichy regime [...] continued racist policies begun by France’s Third Republic, which pushed young Black men from the empire into forced military service,” including forced recruitment from “Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger and Mauritania; [...] Benin, Gambia and Burkina Faso; and Muslim men from Morocco and Algeria. In these ways, the French carried on a wartime campaign of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia, pairing these forms of racialized hatred from the colonial era with antisemitism. Antisemitism had deep roots in French and colonial history, but it found new force in the era of fascism.” [1]

---

In late 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Tunisia, the SS “imprisoned some 5,000 Jewish men in roughly 40 forced labor and detention camps on the front lines and in cities like Tunis.” [2] The fascist Italian government had been experimenting with racist and anti-Black policy in their colonization of East Africa; these policies were expanded in Libya. Here, “Mussolini ordered the Jews of Cyrenaica moved” as “most of the 2,600 Jews deported [...] were sent to the camp of Giado” while “other Libyan Jews were deported to the camps of Buqbuq and Sidi Azaz.” [2]

---

Stein and Boum describe the diversity of prisoner experience: “In these camps, [...] the complex racist logic of Nazism and fascism took vivid form. Muslims arrested for anti-colonial activities were pressed into back-breaking labor” and “broke bread with other forced workers” including ‘Ukrainians, Americans, Germans, Russian Jews and others [...] arrested, deported and imprisoned by the Vichy regime after fleeing Franco’s Spain. There were political enemies of the Vichy and Nazi regime too, including socialists, communists, union members [...] overseen by [...] forcibly recruited [...] Moroccan and Black Senegalese men, who were often little more than prisoners themselves.” [1]

As Stein and Boum describe it: “Vichy North Africa became a unique site [...] where colonialism and fascism co-existed and overlapped.” [2]

They write: “Together, we have spent a decade gathering the voices of the diverse peoples who endured World War II in North Africa, across lines of race, class, language and region. Their letters, diaries, memoirs, poetry and oral histories are both defiant and broken. They express both faith and despair. All in all, they understood themselves to be trapped in a monstrous machine of fascism, occupation, violence and racism.” [1]

---

[1]: Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aomar Boum. “80 years ago, Nazi Germany occupied Tunisia - but North Africans’ experiences of World War II often go unheard.” The Conversation. 15 November 2022.

[2]: Sarah Arbevaya Stein and Aomar Boum. “Labor and Internment Camps in North Africa.” Holocaust Encyclopedia online. Last edited 13 May 2019.

[daloy-politsey]

Applications for language classes beginning in Michaelmas Term 2024 are now open! These classes include ones on the following languages: Haketia, Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic, Classical Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Moroccan, Judeo-Neo-Aramaic, Judeo-Persian, Ladino, Old Yiddish and Yiddish.

The deadline to apply is 16 September at 12 noon UK time.

[sefaradweb]

Learning Ladino

Ladino, also referred to as Judeo-Spanish or Judezmo, serves as the linguistic heritage of Sephardic Jews, or Sepharadim, descending from the Iberian Peninsula, which encompasses present-day Spain and Portugal. Following their expulsion from Spain in 1492, Sepharadim dispersed throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and beyond, predominantly finding refuge in the Ottoman Empire. It was within this diverse cultural milieu that Ladino emerged, blending Spanish and other Iberian languages with a robust infusion of Hebrew-Aramaic elements, while also incorporating linguistic influences from the surrounding Mediterranean regions such as Turkish, Greek, Italian, French, and Arabic. Embracing versatility, Ladino became the language of everyday life, spanning from domestic settings to public spaces like markets and synagogues, and encompassing various aspects of culture including humor, politics, and literature.

[suchaspookyginger]

we're not thinking too hard about this, have some italkit!soul word vomit

________

he's watching maka practice japanese with tsubaki, tongue still too heavy on the japanese r, yet still trying so hard to cling to her mother's homeland, when he's suddenly reminded of his grandmother.

____

nonna bianchi, her hair as white as soul's and the fairest blonde before that to match wes's; eyes richer than molasses that glowed almost carmine in twilight. she carried herself with grace and dignity always, her back straight and her head high, making those surrounding her forget that she never quite reached five feet. she was born, like so few in her time, in america to judeo-italian immigrants.

(refugees, soul thinks to this day. they fled their community in venice to brooklyn before the pope had even denounced the rise in antisemitism during the fascist period. immigration, nonna said, because we were smart; we left when other italian jews were supporting mussolini's rise. refugees, wes agreed with soul, because we saw the smoke for what it was, because our blood and our bones remember fleeing sicily, remember fleeing spain, remember fleeing, fleeing, fleeing, if only to survive one more day. immigration, nonna said, because we still have our pride.)

nonna bianchi, whose first language was a pidgin hybrid of italian, ladino and english, yet spoke each individually with perfect clarity. nonna bianchi, who later collected languages like soul collects records, like maka collects books, was always careful with her company when speaking italian to soul ("they didn't care that i was born american, solomon," she said, steely gaze in the middle distance. "they only cared that my family's homeland was an enemy."). she was always careful with her company when teaching him hebrew, too ("these american goyim are our friends now, but their fathers and grandfathers supported hitler before american involvement in the war, and their children and grandchildren may support the next one. always be alert, son.").

nonna bianchi, whose first love was her culture, her second russian opera, instilled the love and drive for music in her children and grandchildren while also drilling in the holiness of shabbat, the importance of community, the yearning for their culture.

nonna bianchi, whose love for her grandchildren overflowed like wine during passover, yet overwhelmed them with her strive for perfection in judaism, perfection in performance, perfection in academics, to the point where soul just snapped. he broke and he broke down and he fled like his ancestors before him the second he had an out, the blades erupting from his arms providing him a lifeline away from the deep waters of his childhood home and expectations. (he never could worship lord death as the god he was, but he could work for him, work under him, work as a tool to keep this world safe. it took maka the better part of a year to understand why he didn't turn any lights on on saturdays and fasted every few months, his devotion to his people sporadic yet second nature. on an early mission to los angeles, he stumbled upon a small judaica shop, feeling a longing he hadn't realized ate away at him until that moment. he left with one mezuzah not dissimilar to the one on nonna's front door and a simple black kippah with red stitching. he only kisses the mezuzah on shabbat and holidays, and he has never worn the skullcap, but it sits in his drawer for a day he may need it. it brings him comfort regardless.)

nonna bianchi, whom soul called for the first time days after kidd made his auguration speech, calling for a new time with witches as allies and soul as the last death scythe.

"are you ready to come home, solomon?" nonna asked in italian as they reached the natural conclusion of their conversation, catching up on lost time, her voice slightly gruffer with age that soul missed over the last half-decade gone, the dulcet tones that brought her fame in her youth still in the under layers.

"i am home," he replied, his hebrew stiff but there - barely touched in his time away save for the high holidays and the occasional shabbat. he looks out from his spot on the couch in their living room, into the kitchen where maka is prepping dinner, "i found my music out here."

"and your judaism?" nonna asked. "surely working for a minor deity has caused issues."

"it's probably not how you'd hoped for me. death city is wanting for any jewish life, and i can't make it to my shul in vegas more than once a month for the most part. but maka, and everyone else, too, they do shabbat with me. we do tzedakah and hold seders and maka listens to me when i need to remember." soul paused, searching for the words - in english, italian, hebrew, it didn't matter, "it's not - sometimes it's lonely. i needed to leave, but it didn't stop me from missing wes, or mom and dad, or you. i didn't realize how much judaism, and being italian, was a part of me until i was no longer immersed in it."

"but you won't return."

"no, nonna. i'll visit, soon, but this is - maka, she's - i'm home here, in a way that i hadn't felt in new york, maybe ever."

"bring this girl with you," nonna said, "when you come visit. she sounds like a hell of a woman."

"she is, nonna."

"good," she chuckled, "maybe we can make a jew out of her yet."

soul spluttered, heat rising in his face. maka looked over at him in confusion when she heard him yell out, "nonna! not in english!"

____

soul's still watching maka and tsubaki talk from his spot on the couch. they've taken over the kitchen table, a few japanese workbooks meant for late elementary-aged children open to help maka practice her kana, sitting just as ignored as their cups half-full of tea as maka's face flushes pink. he can't tell if it's from concentration or their topic of discussion, but he smiles soft at her expression regardless.

soul is no expert in japanese, truly he doesn't understand a lick of it, but he can guess that their conversation has strayed to him by the number of times they say "sōru," the sound of his name a borrowed word all the more evident when tsubaki catches his eye and smirks. maka shoots her a sharp look and says something to her, lips careful yet clumsy as they form words still unfamiliar in her mouth, inflection at the end implying a question. tsubaki laughs, sugary sweet, as she obliges what is now clearly a subject change.

maka looks over at him after a while, smile soft and uncharacteristically shy, and a need washes over soul. he gets up, strides the short walk to where maka sits, and stands behind her, his face lightly buried in her hair.

"soul?" maka's voice is light, inquisitive. tsubaki raises an eyebrow, silent as she picks up her now surely cold tea and delicately sips at it.

he decides on hebrew. just because he needs to say it to her face doesn't mean he's not still terrified out of his mind. italian and ladino are too similar to spanish, and they're in close enough proximity to a few hispanic communities to hear spanish casually, and even maka knows enough to be able to figure out what he's saying without needing to actually know either language. hebrew doesn't have a distinction in the way that volere and amore are distinct, but his voice raw when ohev comes out of his mouth and he worries that she'll know regardless.

the whine that comes out of his mouth when she replies with her own "ohevet" is covered by her giggle, bright and musical as ever.

[gorillawithautism]

arabic seems pretty i think

putting in on the list of "languages i would like to learn but probably never will" right next to indonesian

that list also features

literally every jewish language but especially judeo-italian and yiddish

"african" and "indian" (ik african and indian aren't language but specific languages aren't not mentioned because i haven't done any research or narrowed it down at all i just have a vague interest in african and indian languages respectively)

latin and/or greek but like the old stuff,, because etymology is interesting to me

probably more but i don't actually have this written down anywhere so idk

"native american" (again, not an actual language because same deal as african and indian languages with not narrowing it down... i just think it would be cool to learn more about various cultures of the land i occupy and learning languages is a great way to learn about culture from the people who speak said languages)

japanese

[sethshead]

ooohthatsmelll "JVPUSC's ig story is now full of major cope about their inability to read or write Hebrew lmao"

waluigistache "I mean yiddish is also written right to left💀,it isnt even modern hebrew,this seder plate has existed in the diaspora for CENTURIES,given they are college students,that means they celebrated passover a handful of times to know its not רורמ but מרור" Next_Dragonfruit_969 "What nonsense. If someone was showing off a homemade Basmala calligraphy, and they spelled everything wrong there would be serious questions about their connection to the faith. Praying in Arabic is required in Islam - it is the language of God. 

"Plus Yiddish and Judeo-Italian and others all use the Hebrew alphabet and Semitic style of reading (right to left). The oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages explains better than I could. 

"Jews have always prayed in Hebrew, even the most Reform, Reconstruction, or humanist branches. This is an insane statement."  minecrafthentai69 "'Dino' it's Ladino, lmao."

[spacelazarwolf]

help me figure something that me n my friend have been arguing abt (we’re both jews shes ashkenazi im sephardi/mizrachi i need another non-ashkenazi opinion abt this and all my jewish mutuals r ashlenazi)

is yiddish the ‘mother tongue’? and if it is, does that mean that all jews should speak it, ashkenazi or not?

yiddish is the diaspora language that primarily ashkenazi jews spoke and some still speak. other diaspora groups had/have different diaspora languages depending on where they spent the diaspora. i’m taking a judeo italian class, and am hoping to take ladino (largely spoken by sephardi jews) as well.

yiddish is the mother tongue…for people whose communities spoke it. it is not The One Jewish Mother Tongue, and to say that all jews should speak it for that reason is ashkenormative as fuck.

[bookwyrminspiration]

ALSO idk if youd be interested but oxford is also doing free zoom classes in endangered jewish languages, applications are out now :] im trying out for judeo moroccan because thats the only time slot i can do but they also have judeo greek, ladino, old yiddish, yiddish, judeo italian, and so many more its so cool sorry for rambling so much LMAO

OO I didn't know about those--and no need to apologize, you're far from rambling by my standards. And language is a topic I love!

I have the site pulled up and will have to think about whether I want to join one or not--I do love learning new languages, but I am about to start another. Especially since I'm also taking my own classes and don't know if I'll have the time. Either way, they do list materials, so I could look at those on my own.

Regardless of whether I can do it or not, I appreciate knowing about it! So thank you for sharing with me :)

[useless-catalanfacts]

Besides Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish), are there any living Judaic or other spiritually Romance languages that you know of?

According to the internet, Judeo-Italian has about 200 speakers.

[magnficientoarfish]

image description: an infographic, “How to say happy Passover in Jewish languages” by @myjewishlearning

Hebrew: “Chag kasher v’sameach”

Judeo-Amharic: “Melkam yeqita be-al”

Ladino: “Pesach alegre”

Judeo-Persian: “Moedeuten mubarak bashe”

Judeo-Italian: “Buon mongedde”

Judeo-Arabic: “Ikun elik el-eid mbrak”

Yiddish: “A freylichen un koshern pesach”

end ID

Happy Pesach wherever you are and however you sat it! Our unique cultural traditions are beautiful and worth celebrating!

[sefaradweb]

Matilda Koen Sarano Z'L: Despedida i Homenaje

🇪🇸 Emisión en Sefardí: El programa rinde homenaje a la memoria de Matilda Koen Sarano Z"L, destacada trabajadora por la difusión de la lengua y cultura sefardí. Matilda Koen, de origen sefardí italiano de Turquía, fue una destacada defensora del judeoespañol y del rico patrimonio de la tradición oral. Autora de numerosos libros y colaboradora en medios como Kol Israel, enseñó el cuento popular sefardí y la lengua en universidades en Israel. Se comparte parte de su obra teatral "Maridos i Mujeres" y sus poesías-kantes interpretadas por Mónica Monasterio. El programa concluye con el deseo de continuar su importante labor.

🇺🇸 Broadcast in Ladino: The program pays tribute to the memory of Matilda Koen Sarano Z"L, a dedicated advocate for the dissemination of Sephardic language and culture. Matilda Koen, of Italian Sephardic origin from Turkey, was a prominent figure in preserving Judeo-Spanish and its rich oral tradition. Author of numerous books and a contributor to Kol Israel, she taught Sephardic folk tales and the language at universities in Israel. The program shares excerpts from her musical comedy "Maridos i Mujeres" and her poetry-songs performed by Mónica Monasterio. The broadcast concludes with a hope to continue her important work.