Guest Post: Uplifting Sephardic Voices in Literature: More Important Now than Ever

 This my first in a guest post blog series honoring Mizrachi Heritage Month. Welcome, Sarah Aroeste!

A guest blog post by author Sarah Aroeste

The Jewish experience cannot be boiled down to Seinfeld, matzoh ball soup, or yiddishisms like "kvetch" or "schvitz." Jewish culture is not a monolith, and as a proud Sephardic Jewish woman, I want more people to understand and learn about this oft under-represented part of Jewish life, especially in books.

At the start of 2024 I launched a TikTok series called the "Livros Lookout" - livros being the Ladino word for books. What is Ladino, you ask?

Ladino is the language spoken by Sephardic Jews, those Jews who trace their ancestry to the Iberian Peninsula prior to their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Under the edict proclaimed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Jews were exiled if they did not convert to Catholicism. My family, among hundreds of thousands of others, left Spain rather than convert and eventually found safety in the Ottoman Empire. We took our 15^th-century Castilian Spanish and, traveling eastward, borrowed linguistic elements from our neighbors. In today's Ladino, which is still spoken, one can hear Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew and more. It is a beautiful language that was the majority dialect of Jews across the eastern Mediterranean until WWII decimated the Ladino-speaking world. In my grandfather's hometown of Bitola, now in North Macedonia, 98% of the Sephardic Jewish population was exterminated, and with them our customs, our songs and our language. When you lose a language, you lose a world.

And yet, Sephardic Jews still live on today. While fewer in number now than our more commonly known Ashkenazi counterparts, those Jews of Eastern European descent, we are deeply proud of our heritage. Today we live all around the globe and have retained a unique Hispanic-Ottoman culture, especially through the Ladino language - that binds us. We know that our culture represents an important and colorful thread of world history.

With authors of Jewish literature falling victim to bans and cancellations in a post Oct 7^th world, I feel it imperative to shine a light on those authors – and their books – who are uplifting specifically Sephardic voices in their works. We must show the world the vivid tapestry of the Jewish experience, of which Sephardic life is a profound part.

I started the Livros Lookout series to showcase books across genres – children's books, fantasy, memoirs, graphic novels, poetry chap books, music books, cookbooks and more – that highlight the Ladino language, and through it, the Sephardic world. Some selections may be surprising, for example bestselling fantasy author, Leigh Bardugo's latest book, The Familiar, in which the use of Ladino is a primary plot point. Others are playful, like a word-for-word Ladino version of Alice in Wonderland, translated by Avner Perez. Do you like graphic novels? The bilingual Ladino/English middle grade graphic novel, José and the Pirate Captain Toledano by Arnon Z. Schorr and Joshua M. Edelglass is a must read. Interested in feminist literature? Why not read Mazaltob: A Novel by Blanche Bendahan, translated by Yaelle Azagury and Frances Malino, considered a classic of modern Sephardi feminist prose.Are you a memoirist? Then open The Diario, written at the start of the 20^th-century by Alfred Ascher and translated recently by his niece, Gloria J. Ascher for us all to enjoy.

If food writing is more your style, your mouth will water reading Stella Cohen's gorgeous cookbook, Stella's Sephardic Table, with its in-depth food history as passed down by Ladino-Speaking Jews who fled the Island of Rhodes in the early 1900's for Zimbabwe. Are you a short story writer? Take a dive into Sephardic storytelling with The Jewish Parrot and other Tales compiled by Francois Azar, or enjoy a picture book with the whole family, A Turkish Rosh Hashana, by Etan Basseri and illustrated by Zeynep Ozataley. There are so many interesting, unique ways to interact with Sephardic and Ladino culture; there is truly something for everyone's reading taste. Even babies.

As a children's book writer, I only write books with Sephardic themes, and each of my five books so far center around a Ladino phrase for the youngest set. I wrote my first two board books, Buen Shabat, Shabbat Shalom and Mazal Bueno! specifically to normalize the Sephardic experience for today's young families. We need children – Jewish and not – to start learning at the outset that Sephardic culture is a valuable part of Jewish life. This is the only way we can create better understanding of the breadth of Jewish diversity as kids grow older.

While no concrete numbers exist, an early study from the Cohen Center at Brandeis University suggests that 10-20% of the American Jewish population is non-Ashkenazi. In a 2019 study conducted by Stanford University, 12-15% of American Jews consider themselves to be Jews of Color. In short, the contemporary Jewish landscape is such that our themes and characters in books need to start catching up. We, as writers, do readers a disservice if we only show one aspect of a culture. It is hard enough to get Jewish stories published today, let alone ones that highlight non-Ashkenazi life. But the numbers are there and only going up. We need to be more representative.

There are so many more diverse Jewish books coming out now that deserve recognition. So, for 2025 I plan to expand the Livros Lookout series to include more general Sephardic books – still across genres – that don't necessarily focus on Ladino but that still do so much to bring attention to the span of Jewish life. I hope that through a weekly review and spotlight, the Livros Lookout series will enlighten and inspire readers of all backgrounds to learn about a part of Jewish culture with which they might be unfamiliar.

And if you are a writer interested in incorporating more diverse Jewish voices in your work, here are some action items that will help ensure that diverse Jewish characters are portrayed accurately:

•Review your own assumptions

•Consider a non-Ashkenazi minor/secondary character

•Get a sensitivity reader

•In a critique group? Make sure there's diverse representation – not just Jewish

•Be allies – boost, share panels, seek book birthday groups with authors of diverse Jewish and other books

With still a few more weeks left in 2024, I invite you to catch up on some reading suggestions from the Livros Lookout over the past year. Ruth Behar's Across so Many Seas may have been written as a middle grade novel, but I assure you, readers of all ages will be affected by this poignant book that masterfully interweaves four Sephardic stories over five hundred years. Likewise, learn about one of my favorite historical heroines, Dona Gracia Nasi, who was a Renaissance Harriet Tubman saving hundreds of Sephardic Jews from the Inquisition. She also helped sponsor the Ferrara Bible, the earliest printing of the Hebrew Bible in Ladino. The Woman who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Dona Gracia Nasi by Andrée Aelion Brooks should definitely be on your bookshelf.

There is a world of exciting Sephardic-themed literature out there that I invite you to explore and perhaps contribute to yourselves. Jewish culture is expansive, multi-faceted, and eye-opening. Matzoh ball soup is delicious, but so are biskochos and burekas. The Sephardic experience is another part of the story. And a vital one at that.