WHY NOT LADINO AS THE LANGUAGE OF THE HOME?
On the 15th of May, 2003, a Center for Ladino Studies, founded by the family of Yeoshua Selim and Naime Salti, was inaugurated at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Below is the English translation by Rachel A. Bortnick of Selim Salti's speechgiven in Ladino at the opening ceremony of the Center.
Esteemed gentlemen and ladies, dear sisters, dear brothers,
It is with great happiness and gratitude that I salute your honored presence here at the inauguration of the Center for Ladino Studies, named for my wife and me. This will be the first center in our country dedicated to academic studies and scientific work on the language, the history, and the culture of the Sepharadim. This Center was created as a result of the outstanding academic work by the professors and many students of Ladino in this great institution which is hosting us tonight. Bar Ilan is considered worldwide among the premier universities of Judaic studies. I thank the administrators of the University for giving me the opportunity and their collaboration to establish this Center, the first of its kind in the world.
I rejoice in thinking about the numerous students who will learn the language, the literature, the history, the ethnography of the Sepharadim, their folklore, their music, and their songs; researchers from Israel and the whole world will gather here to reveal new historical, literary, and musical discoveries. This Center will offer to the general public a great variety of interesting courses and activities about Sepharadim; it will publish studies of a high caliber, and in short will be, I hope, the place for the safeguarding of the Sephardic memory.
Our history teaches us that we Sepharadim have been exiled by the Roman Empire from our country Eretz Israel, and a second time we were pushed out of Spain and Portugal in the 15th century of the modern calendar; of course we should not forget that in the first half of the last century, many of us were deported to Auschwitz, and burned for the only sin of being Jews. During the first exile, we were called Hebrews, and during the second, Spaniards. Why? Quite simply because we no longer spoke Hebrew among ourselves, but the Spanish of that epoch. This second exile did not prevent us from subsequently resettling in the Ottoman Empire, where we preserved the Iberian culture, our customs and traditions. As Angel Pulido stated, at the beginning of this tragedy we were "Spaniards without a country." By the end of the 16th century, it is estimated that over half of the Sepharadim fleeing the Iberian Peninsula had resettled in the Ottoman Empire, thanks to the good graces of the sultans and the hospitality of the Turkish people. They not only received us in their country, but with tolerance they allowed us to keep our Sephardic heritage in its totality. The Turkish Republic which replaced the Empire was the first Muslim country in the world which recognized Israel de facto and de jure, and today has, after Israel, the largest Sephardic community in the world.
I am privileged to have been born there, the country from which tonight we have among us many sisters and brothers. I feel very emotional to see them present here in these difficult days in our country, and I say to them, "thank you" from the bootom of my heart.
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen,
In the present moments we know well that we must try to safeguard this language [Ladino] in all its dialectical variations. I am convinced that its future lies in Israel. It is for this reason tha we have established this Center in this University and not in any other place in the world. Our wish is to provide every opportunity needed to prevent the disappearance of our Sephardic roots. I hope that the Ladino Center will have many brothers [that similar ones will be established] be it in Israel or in other countries.Do not forget that for more than one hundred years French was taught in Jewish schools as a lingua franca, and that despite this Ladino did not disappear. Today our native language is Hebrew, and the lingua franca is English - and why not Ladino as the language of the home? Why shouldn't today's young people have the opportunity to know the treasures of this culture? I therefore implore each of you present, that you try to convince energetically all the skeptics that you might encounter on this subject, that you share with them your knowledge and your enthusiasm, because the objective is very important: the memory of our past and of world-wide Sepharadism.
My wife and I thank you all again for having come and participated in this historic day, and we salute you with deep respect.
Selim Yoshua Salti
