eSefarad Noticias del Mundo Sefaradi
During high school I met young people with Zionist ideas. I heard about their plans to live in Israel and work on the land. They were all, like myself, children of Jews who lived in Buenos Aires and did not know much about life in the country. At first I found their ideas attractive; they spoke of equality, of collective living, of “kibbutz”. Socialism was an integral part of their ideology. And indeed many of them lived up to their ideals. Though much smaller than the North American Jewish community, the Argentine community sent more settlers to Israel between 1948 and 1967. Because I could not imagine myself moving to Israel and working on the land, I decided that I was not a Zionist and parted company with them. However, I was glad somebody was actually going to go and keep Israel alive. My attitude was naturally regarded with suspicion by my Zionist friends, who were very disappointed in me. After that, I was never sure that I would ever be welcome in Israel. At 15, I felt I ha already ruined my chances.
During the Peron years (1946-1955) the Jews in Argentina, including my family, were concerned because Peron openly admired the Italian Fascist Mussolini. On one hand, Peron praised the new Jewish state, but then abstained in the United Nations vote to establish the state. He expressed sympathy for Jewish refugees, but limited Jewish inmigration. He praised the Jew for his humility:
When a Jew comes to ask that his right be respected, he does this humbly, without arrogance and without pressing that the have justice. This demonstration is for me, appreciating the souls of men, the greatest quality that a man can have who claims his rights.2
My father, like many other businessmen, joined the Peronista party as a protection against anti-Semitism. We watched events in the Jewish business district of Once. If windows were broken and anti-Semitism slogans painted
on the walls, we would know though word of mouth. Newspapers did not publish news of this kind – – in a city of 8 million people!
All the women in my family, except my oldest sister, married Ashkenazi Jews. We all married in our early twenties, as expected, and we all tried to be hanum. I moved to Italy where my husband was continuing his studies in physics. His family was cultured; his father was a book publisher, they had books and painting in their home, and they supported my interest in books and ideas. I was dazzled; my father had now found my true home. In Rome, where I lived for 7 years, being Jewish became a memory. I visited the synagogue a few times but couldn’t distinguish the Jews of Rome from the Romans. And indeed, the Jews of Rome have been there since the 2nd century BCE, and our histories have very little in common.
I left my husband after 6 years, lived in Napoles for 3 years, and came to U.S. in 1965 with my 5-years old son. I had also become a scientist, a biologist, and I went to do research firs at Brandeis, then at Harvard Medical School. Though I met many Jews in the scientific world, they rarely spoke about their Jewishness, and I was silent too. Somehow it seemed that now that we were all scientist, our background no longer mattered. As I became involved in the women’s movement in the late 60’s and began to look at the forces that shaped my life, I realized that being born in a Jewish Sephardic home in a Catholic country had been a very important factor in my experiences. I was a member of an “invisible” minority and could not identify with the experiences of many North American Jewish women, who belong to visible and well-identified minority. In the U.S. out of almost 6 million Jews, about 150.000 are Sephardic ( including not only the Ladino-speaking Jews but also the Oriental Jews). Meeting another Sephardic feminist 3 years ago felt familiar and wonderful. With her, I began reading Sephardic history and realized that we Sephardic women need to speak for ourselves.
Some Sephardic History
Though my family had frequently alluded to the splendid past of the Jews in Spain. I still resisted accepting how important Sephardic culture had been in many different areas. The work of Sephardic scholars was responsible for introducing science and philosophy into Europe; they translated Hebrew and Arabic into the more accessible Latin. During the Golden Era (900-1100) the Jews excelled in intellectual endeavors such as medicine, mathematics, philosophy, poetry, ethics, and mysticism. At the same time they strove to be “statesmen-scholars”, to unite in their persons the holy and the secular, the intellectual and the mundane, Maimonides being the foremost example. A physician, rabbi, mathematician, astronomer, he anticipated ideas in theoretical mathematics and the atomicity of time. Practical contributions in medicine, astronomy and logic made Sephardic Jews famous all over Europe. The “Alfonsine Tables” (list of the planetary movements compiled in the reign of Alfonso II of Spain, 1252-1284) were prepared by two Jews from Toledo. The voyage of Columbus was made possible by the almanac prepared by the Talmudist Rabbi Abraham Zacut. Indeed, there are grounds for believing that Columbus himself was member of a Converso family.
The Sephardim were known for their love of music, and they have left an amazingly rich folklore of secular and religious songs. The secular songs, with themes from daily life and aspects of the life cycle (birth, childhood, courting, marriage, death) give a vivid picture of Sephardic life. Luckily, many of these songs are being revived. They provide one of the best ways to learn about the Sephardic experience.
*Ladino word meaning «good-looking woman
2 Robert Weisbrot, The Jews of Argentina (Phila.: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979)
Fuente: The book: The Tribe of Dina, a Jewish women’s anthology.
We received the book by Gloria Ascher courtesy.
To be a Hanum is a very interesting, and real article about our lives, in South america, how Judaism is seen in the States, and how we minorities, behave on different fronts, where we have to be completely at home or to have a pose, in front such systems as the Peron times.
Lovely,