Yugoslav Sephardim as Jewish Other: Selected Literary Testimonies

• In Event: Sephardic Modernity: Leadership, Literature and Law

Abstract

This paper attempts to revisit the literary fiction created by the Western Balkan Sephardim in Serbian and Bosnian languages during the interwar period, which conveys a strikingly unconventional image of this Jewry. The prose of Hajim S. Davičo, Isak Samokovlija and Žak Konfino testifies that the Yugoslav Sephardi identity expressed by the term "sephardismo" stands for „Other“ as an alternative response to the dichotomy between Zionism and assimilation in galut. This „otherness“ can be traced on different levels: linguistically – Judeo-Spanish on the verge of extinction as the first spoken language is succeeded by South Slavic languages, which are now mastered by Sephardi authors and gradually appropriated as just as Jewish as Hebrew and Ladino once; culturally – Yugoslav Sephardim perceive themselves as far too Oriental or even Turkish when confronted with overwhelmingly westernized Ashkenazim (whom they unequivocally nickname "Tudeskos", i.e. Germans); politically – they are hardly any fervent adherents of Zionism and prefer instead to cherish their ethnocultural Self in its local, regional hypostasis (which constitutes the essence of sephardismo). Most characters utilize adjectives „Spanish“ and „Jewish“, e.g., when asked to denote their mothertongue („Our Spanish, that is Jewish language“ being a paradigmatic answer), but simultaneously tend to perceive Serbian/Bosnian as already internalized to the degree of „our“ language (naški). Thus, the linguistic assimilation is precisely what renders these Sephardim so distinctive without posing any threat to their unambiguously firm Jewish core which they are determined to preserve. Although skeptical towards Zionism, Yugoslav sephardismo does not by any means opt for ethnic assimilation – it embraces some everlasting rudiments of Ibero-Spanish identification (folklore, proverbs, hispanonostalgia as topos) merged with an ever growing Balkan reference and advocates the singularity of its complex multilayered structure. In this paper, I argue that Yugoslav Sephardim are portrayed as a dynamic ethnocultural group seeking to grasp and redefine their identity in a fashion that does not comply with either Zionism or assimilationism. These authors' prose remains the principal witness of the unique Balkan Lebenswelt of this Jewry in the making which was later on almost completely destroyed during the Shoah.

Author

• Alexey Pekov, Columbia University