Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Uncovering the “Shroud of Oblivion”: Ladino Archives and the Future of Jewish History

Mon, December 17, 5:00 to 6:30pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Cityview 1 Ballroom

Abstract

In the wake of the Holocaust, Joseph Nehama, a leading Jewish intellectual from Salonica, Greece, who had survived Bergen-Belsen, worried that that it would be impossible for future generations to write the history of his community. Not only had all of his city’s synagogues, institutions, and cemetery been destroyed, but the Nazis had also confiscated the communal libraries and archives and were feared lost. With what sources could a new narrative be composed? Nehama worried that his community—and Ladino-speaking Jews, more generally—would become enveloped in a perpetual “a shroud of oblivion.”

Nehama was partly correct: while some of the libraries and archives of his community were indeed lost, other segments wound up scattered across the globe and have only recently come to the attention of researchers. Regardless of the availability of such resources, the experiences of Ladino-speaking Jews have remained on the margins of the modern Jewish history in part due to the persistent Eurocentric orientation of the field that mutually shapes and is shaped by Jewish archives and other related institutions.

This paper explores the position—and absence—of Ladino archives at Jewish archival repositories in three contexts: at general Jewish institutions established during the first half of the twentieth century, such as the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People; at Sephardi-specific repositories created in the post-war years, such as the American Sephardi Federation and Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities of the East; and finally, at newly-created digital repositories, such as the University of Washington’s Sephardic Studies Digital Collection, Stanford University’s Sephardi Studies Project, and UCLA’s Sephardic Studies Initiative.

Will the greater availability of source materials in Ladino enable current and future Jewish historians to more easily incorporate aspects of Sephardi history into their research and narratives? In addition to access, what other ideological and structural practices must change in order to broaden the framework of Jewish history and enable the mainstreaming of the Ladino archive?

Author