'It's early to declare Ladino dead'

[Behind the Aegis]

ISTANBUL - It may be the only city in the world that's divided between Asia and Europe. But did you know that it's also the only city in the world that publishes a regular newspaper in Ladino? The weekly Salom, which serves the Jewish population of Turkey, and especially the Jews of this city of 10 million on the Bosphorus, is mostly written in Turkish, but each edition has an entire page of news and articles in Ladino.

Ladino, which is widely known here as "Jewish Spanish," is fighting for its survival. When Salom was founded, in 1947, as part of the broader cultural activities of the Jewish community, it appeared entirely in Ladino, but over the years Turkish has replaced that language. In addition to the weekly page, there is also a monthly magazine in Ladino, which is apart of an effort of the members of Turkey's Jewish community to preserve the language, an effort that also involves many in Israel, Europe and America. But it's only in Turkey that's there a substantial community whose members are united by Ladino.

Turkey's Jewish community numbers approximately 23,000, which makes it, after Iran's, the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. Nonetheless, this large population, which comprises the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, and who were welcomed to the empire by the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II, is aging. The birthrate is dwindling - for every three deaths there is only one new child, and 20 percent of all marriages are mixed.

Many in the Jewish community view the campaign to revive Ladino as one of the important ways to preserve their cultural life. Turkish Jewry is largely secular, something that reduces the importance of Hebrew, the holy tongue. The hope now is that Ladino can become entrenched as the community's third language, after Turkish and English.


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