eSefarad Noticias del Mundo Sefaradi
Translations by David Fintz Altabe
Edited by Robert Bedford
Published by
The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture
Haim Vitali Sadacca, who wrote and published poetry in Turkish in his younger years, now composes poetry only in Ladino, his beloved ancestral language. The poems in the book, chosen by the author himself, express the universal aspirations of the human soul for love, affection, compassion, generosity, peace and harmony. Flowing in rhyme and rhythm, they reveal Sadacca’s skill as a poet and his mastery of the Ladino language.
The unique collection is further distinguished with English translations, prepared especially for this book, by the late David F. Altabe, himself an accomplished poet in Ladino and English.
Sadacca’s poems have appeared in publications worldwide, in Ladino only, including Sephardic journals such as Shalom (Istanbul), El Amanaser (Istanbul), Los Muestros (Brussels), La Lettre Sepharade (Paris and Washington), Sefaraires (Buenos Aires), as well as on Ladinokomunita, the Ladino-language Internet discussion group with over 1,000 members. Sadacca’s poems have also been read on the air, worldwide, in Sephardic and Ladino programs such as Radio Exterior de España and Kol Israel Radio.
One of Sadacca’s poems, Primer Amor, recently set to music by Reneta Sibel Yolak of Istanbul, received first prize at the prestigious Festiladino competition of new Ladino songs in Israel.
Un Ramo De Poemas will be available beginning May 1, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-886857-11-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008938510
126pp, paper. In ladino & English
Printed in the USA
About the Author
Haim Vitali Sadacca was born in 1919 in Chanakkale, Turkey, where he had his elementary schooling. As there was no secondary school in this city, in 1933 his parents sent him to Istanbul. There he studied at the Haydarpasha Lycée and two years at the Ecole Saint Benoît for French language classes. Haim Vitali Sadacca wrote poems in Turkish as a student in Istanbul, where his poetry appeared in local publications.
Now, his passion is to paint, and write poetry, expressing his thoughts and emotions in Ladino, his beloved ancestral language. An accountant who started his own business in 1947, Sadacca retired in 1990 to be near his children, one of whom lives in New York and the other in Canada. Since then, he and his wife, Janet, reside six months of the year in Montreal, and the remainder in Florida and Istanbul.
About the translator
David Fintz Altabe, Professor Emeritus of Spanish, City University of New York was born in New York to Sephardic parents from Turkey. Altabe was an internationally known specialist in Judeo-Spanish literature, having written numerous articles on the subject, as well as original poems and folktales in Ladino including Chapter and Verse: Poems; Temas y Dialogos; and Una Kozecha de Rimas i Konsejas: A Harvest of Rhymes and Folk-Tales. David Altabe passed away suddenly, in November 2008, shortly after completing the English translations for this book.
Read what Haim Vitali Sadacca has to say about UN RAMO DE POEMAS.
An Interview with Güler Orgun.
