Tag Archives: Rita Arditti

The Kabbala, the mystical body of  Judaism, flourished in Spain and was later developed by Sephardic Rabbis in Palestine. Its influence spread back to Europe, where it led indirectly to the founding of the Hassidic movement in Poland. The Kabbala affirms the power of the subconscious mind, maintaining,  for instance, …

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 …

My mother would go to synagogue every few weeks and light candles on the Sabbath before the pictures of her dead relatives. One of her sisters, Matilde, had disappeared from France, where she had been living during the Nazi occupation. For years my mother would visit international relief agencies, Jewish …

 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 …

What she said “[Ladino is] a 15th century Spanish that the Jews that were expelled from Spain spoke in the 15th century when they went to other countries like Holland, Turkey, Italy, and North Africa. They kept their language to this day. The construction of the language is 15th century …