My ancestors speak by Rita Arditti (Z'L): To be a Hanum* – Part 1

 I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the second of three daughters of a Jewish Sephardic family. My parents had left Turkey in the 1920’s when it had gotten «bad for the Jews». They met and got married in Buenos Aires.

The Jewish community in Turkey traced its origins to Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal by the Inquisition of the 15th century. The Turkish Empire had welcomed the Jews, who lived and prosperes there for almost 4 centuries. But during 1912-1913, the Balkan war against the Turks resulted in extreme poverty for the Jewish communities. Turkish nationalism emerged as a powerful force, and the Jews and other ethnics and racial minorities were persecuted.

I grew up hearing stories of Jews in the army being treated like animals, of forced labor and heavy punishments. One story still stands out in my mind a friend of my father’s family, a middle aged Jewish man, was ordered to move a piano uphill by himself. He tied but could not move it. He was beaten and sent to jail with a long sentence for «refusing to obey orders». As a result of such treatment, Jews started to leave Turkey and emigrate to the Americas.

As a young man, my father, Jacques, went to Argentina to join his older brother in the import-export textile business, a common Sephardic occupation in Turkey and Argentina. He had had vey little formal education, maybe a couple of years after elementary school, and some accounting and business courses. He never read anything but the newspaper, but like many other Sephardim he spoke Spanish, Ladino¹, Turkish, French, Hebrew and some Greek.

My mother, Rosa Cordovero, came from a large family, but she had not grown up with her parents. As a young child she had been sent to live with and take care of her grandmother Rachel, after whom I was named. In the custom of her times, my great-grandmother smoked Turkish cigarettes, played cards and entertained friends around small tables where Turkish coffee and sweets were served. My mother was trained to clean house and serve her grandmother. She also lacked formal education, but she spoke Spanish, Ladino, and French. Every month she read the Spanish edition of Readers’ Digest – she had the complete collection bound in leather -and she liked women’s romantic magazines and novels. Searching in her night table, I once found a clearly handled copy of Forever Amber, a book with graphic sexual descriptions. A few years later, I discovered a copy of  The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir in the same place. This one, though, looked like it had hardly been touched.

Both my parents had received some instruction from the Alliance Israelite Universelle, an educational institution the tried to modernize the education available to young Jews in Turkey. The often spoke French between themselves and called their friends and acquaintances «Madame» or «Moiseur». They used to switch to French when the did not want us daughters to understand what they were talking about. «Pas devant les petites» (not in front of the little ones) became the subject of many jokes and symbol of the way our family related. Serious topics, like money matters, illnesses or death, were never discussed in front us.

All the women on both sides of the family were housewives and mothers, only one of them worked out of the home. My aunt Daisy, one of my mother’s sisters (who married «very late» according to my family – in her middle thirties), worked in a bank and then in the perfume trade. For us, the daughters’, it was expected that we would be hanum. We had to look pretty and have good manners; we had to be nice and helpful to the family and obedient to our father. Clothes and looks were very important. But in the right style. To  look like a «gypsy» or flashy was not right. Most important, our looks had to elicit respect and admiration. Elegant, but with style. As for our education, we were not expected to continue after high school. We might work in an office or a bank until we got married. Men would take care of us. The boys we met and went out with were carefully scrutinized as to their potential earning ability. First of all, they had to be Jewish; the next questions were, «What does his father do? What is the planning to do for a living?» If the boy planned to join his father in his business, the anxiety diminished; if he was attempting a new venture, or a career of his own, there were wrinkles in my parents’ faces.

We celebrated the Jewish holidays by gathering with my father’s family. He and his brother had brought my widowed aunt Selma and her thee daughters from Turkey. They supported her financially and acted as surrogate fathers for the daughters. No important decision was taken without consulting the «uncles». My aunt adored them. The celebrations would take place in her small apartment. She lived vey modestly, making clothes for herself, her elderly mother-in-law and her daughters. The men would first go to the temple while we gathered and waited in her dining room for them. When they returned they read in Hebrew and Ladino. We fasted on Yom Kippur and celebrated Rosh Hashanah, Purim and Pesakh. We the children, all female, had fits of laughter at the men reading the religious books with theirs hats on. We helped prepare some of our favorite Sephardic dishes that our mother has planned days in advance: huevos haminados (hardboiled eggs cooked in water, oil and coffee, so that the become brown), borekas (pastry filled with eggplant or potato and cheese), boyos (spinach pies), bamia con tomato (okra with tomatoes) rose petal preserve. My favorite sweet was (and still is) moustachudos, make with walnuts, honey and cinnamon.

*Ladino word meaning «good-looking woman

¹Ladino, the language of the Sephardim, Spanish from the 15th century, also know as Judezmo, Judeo-Spanish. 

 

 

Fuente: The book: The Tribe of Dina, a Jewish women’s anthology.
We received this book by Gloria Ascher courtesy.