eSefarad Noticias del Mundo Sefaradi
Dia de Shabat resivyeron los djudios a ley de la mano de el Dyo,
A sesh de Sivan el mes tresero, ke Yisrael de Mitsrayim salyo.
En anyo de dos mil i kuatrosyentos i kuarenta i ocho, ke el mundo se krio.
On the Sabbath day, the Jews received the Law [Torah] from God’s hand,
On the sixth of Sivan, the third month, when Israel fled from Egypt,
In the year 2448 from the creation of the world.
–La Ketubah de la Ley
On the holiday of Shavuot, Jews commemorate the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai by customarily studying Torah long into the night (a practice called velada, meaning to guard or watch, in Ladino) and celebrating the next day with a festive meal of dairy foods. Jews across the world recite the Book of Ruth in synagogues during the afternoon services. Many Sephardic communities precede this reading by singing the famous azharot, a poetical enumeration of the 613 commandments (mitzvoth). Ladino-speaking Jews also included translations of this liturgy and added a unique Ladino song known as La Ketubah de la Ley, the marriage contract of the law, or Torah.
The traditional connection between Shavuot and the Book of Ruth is one of conversion. The events at Sinai were seen as a moment of collective conversion, while the story of Ruth was interpreted as the archetype for an individual proselyte who desired to join the people of Israel. As Ruth said, as indicated in the Ladino translation: ke en lo ke anduvyeres andare, i en lo ke durmyeres durmere, tu puevlo mi puevlo, i tu Dyo mi Dyo. “For wherever you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge, your people shall be my people and your God my God.”
Much of the Ladino liturgy for the holiday of Shavuot is now available online at the Sephardic Studies Digital Museum. Most notably, we have two copies of Seder Megilat Rut le-hag a-Shavuot: ve-Azharot le-yom rishon ve-sheni. Lashon a-Kodesh i Ladino djunto Ketubat a-Tora. Ordenado en buena regla por provecho de los chikos (The Scroll of Ruth for the festival of Shavuot: and Azharot for the first and second days. [In] the holy tongue [Hebrew] and Ladino together with the marriage contract of the law. Well-ordered for the benefit of children). As the title indicates, this book was published in order to educate children, los chikos.
The well–known Vienna publisher, Joseph Schlesinger, printed this 64-page booklet in 1908/1909. One of the most active publishers of Jewish liturgical texts for consumption by Jews in the Ottoman Empire and beyond, Schlesinger had already published a more extensive collection of Sephardic liturgy for Shavuot twenty years earlier: Bikurim: Minha hadasha kolel seder hag a-Shavu’ot, which includes all of the materials found in his Seder Megilat Rut but also features works appealing to Jews in North Africa such as Sa’adia ben Yosef al-Fayyumi’s Judeo-Arabic translation of the Ten Commandments and another popular version of azharot written by Rabbi Isaac b. Reuven al-Bargeloni.
The Sephardic Studies Program is fortunate to have received four copies in three different colors of the bilingual Hebrew-Ladino Seder Megilat Rut le-hag a-Shavuot. Grace Azose has generously donated one copy that features a soft faded grey cover (UW#858) while Elazar Behar, Gabbai Emeritus of Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, provided us with an identical copy bound together with an orange cover (UW #232).
The Scroll of Ruth for the festival of Shavuot contains both the original Hebrew text and an interlinear Ladino translation. The Hebrew text is printed in meruba (block) script and the Ladino translation in the semi-cursive Hebrew font known as rashi. Both languages include diacritical signs, or nekudot,to help facilitate reading for children and beginners.
Schlesinger’s book also includes a Hebrew text and a Ladino translation of the famous poemazharot, enumerating the 613 commandments found throughout the Torah, by the great medieval Spanish poet and philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021-1058). On the first day of Shavuot, the 248 positive commandments are read, and the 365 negative commandments on the second day. (Later codifiers of Jewish law, such as Moses Maimonides, criticized the various versions of azharot, arguing that the task of categorizing the biblical laws should be left to experts in Talmudic jurisprudence rather than poets who may sacrifice legal accuracy for the sake of poetic meter and form.)
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About the Author: Ty Alhadeff
Ty Alhadeff is the Sephardic Studies Research Coordinator of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the UW. Ty is a graduate of the University of Washington and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Fuente: This article originally appeared on jewishstudies.washington.edu, the website of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. Reprinted here with permission.
