Leah Davcheva
Kaleidoscope of Identities
Tales of Ladino by Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria (in Bulgarian)
Sofia: Riva Publications, 2021, ISBN: 978-954-320-741-1
Reviewed by Zdravka Mihaylova1
The Kaleidoscope of Identities bears the epigraph2:
Unos campos longhis-
ni peru ladra, ni gallu canta!
In the words of the author herself, the book is an expression of the wish to pursue, and efforts to perceive and evaluate Ladino language practices in the light of the incessantly changing social and geopolitical medium in Bulgaria and in the world at large. Leah Davcheva3 affirms: “We live and work in this world, and we have the right to know what is happening in it” (11).
The author introduces the structure of the book from the very first chapter; its core is comprised of the life stories told by fourteen Bulgarian Sephardic Jews that were collected and written down by her. Their stories are preceded by three chapters based on a sound foundation of research carried out by Davcheva over the past ten years. Chapter One delves into the lives of members of the Sephardic community in Bulgaria: a path framed by communicating in Ladino and in several other languages. The interviewees address how they use their linguistic and cultural abilities to self-identify themselves, to perceive and express their multiple identities, and to communicate within and beyond the realms of Bulgarian society. The author supports the thesis that this carousel, this game of alternating identities, enriches our understanding of intercultural communication, and that the stories collected from Ladino-speakers or Ladino-exposed individuals comprise special material for zealous pursuers of interculturality. This chapter, with the beauty of the personal stories and the centuries-long wisdom and knowledge charged with profound insight by Davcheva, will most likely attract scholars and people engaged in academic research.
In the second chapter, Davcheva focuses on the Sepharadim as a separate entity of the Jewish people offering a concise overview of their establishment, rise, and prosperity in Bulgaria, the wider Balkans and the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul, Smyrna, Salonica, Sarajevo, Sofia, etc.) from the early sixteenth century until the present time. She gives a comprehensive outline of the broader historical, political, cultural, and linguistic context of this process, following the evolution of the legacy Ladino (the written form of the language), known as Judeo-Spanish, or Judezmo (in its spoken version), a motley patchwork of medieval Spanish, Turkish, Greek, Slavic elements, and with Hebrew inputs. Due attention is paid to Rashi script and its use as well. Her exposition is organized by themes the author finds to correspond with the personal stories collected in the oral-history project.
In the third and last chapter, before the “confessions” of the fourteen Ladino-speakers are elaborated, Davcheva focuses on the circumstances and historical events affecting Sephardic Jewry in the Bulgarian lands over time. Due attention is paid to the interaction between the Jewish population, the dominant Bulgarian populace, and people of other ethnic and religious groups. This mosaic is completed with an overview of the creation, uses, and the rise and fall of communication in Ladino, and the doors that this language opens (or sometimes closes) for its speakers, a point that all of her interviewees refer to. The author remarks that the book can be read either following the sequence first of the introductory chapters and then the fourteen stories, or the readers could first acquaint themselves with the informants’ narratives, and then refer to any or all of the initial chapters.
Davcheva wrote her own personal, Ladino-related story at the very outset of the project as she wanted to sum up the various roles this “endangered by extinction” language has performed in her own life and the various ways in which it has shaped her identity and personality. She transported herself back to the years of her childhood and youth, then returned to contemporary reality. The author tells us what triggered her decision to write the book. Ten years ago she was walking along a mountain path with a like-minded friend and respected colleague. They were talking about this and that when he unexpectedly, out of the blue, asked her: “Leah, do you speak Ladino? I’ve never heard you mentioning your Sephardic background. Have you been deliberately keeping silent about it?”
This wish for introspective examination and interrogation of herself and her roots led to the Kaleidoscope of Identities, including her own, cited last, through which she sheds light on the people she interviewed. Each of them is characterized by the author with an epithet or subtitle of their respective narrative. The protagonists Leah brings to the fore are:
Yvette Anavi, the “Dedicated one,” author of numerous books about Sephardic-Jewish heritage, a textbook in Ladino, etc. Her son Elie Anavi, the sound “Supporter” of his mother, actively participates in her mission to revive Judezmo. Sophie Danon, the “Idealist,” a doctor by profession, is the founder of the Ladino Club operating within the “Shalom” Organization of Bulgarian Jews. At the Bulgarian school Danon attended, teachers reprimanded classes thus: “Shame on you, the Jewish children are speaking better Bulgarian than you!”
David Cohen, the “Scholarly Researcher,” studied finance, worked at the Central Directorate of the Archives of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, published a book with proverbs in Judezmo entitled The River Flows, the Sand Stays in 1998. Gredi Assa, the “Painter,” professor at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, whose paintings have travelled across the world. The “language games,” as he calls them, have made him feel that he belongs to something larger and have given him the opportunity to choose which culture he wants to belong to at any moment. Aron Bali, the “Mediator,” an octogenarian who perceives belonging to the Ladino-speaking tradition as “a gift from heaven.” Though fully aware that “Ladino is in decline,” the language still enabled him to converse with a Mexican namesake, Menahem Bali, whom he met at a textile trade fair in Germany. Enthused by the serendipitous encounter, he addressed him as “primo hermano.” His son, Solomon Bali, the “Activist,” who has interviewed Holocaust survivors, studied political science to master the levels of influence in a world of growing anti-Semitism. He is nostalgic because the cultural tradition of speaking Ladino is withering away, e.g. “having a conversation about the beauty of being Sephardic and of speaking Ladino…that is held in English” (145).
Andrey Daniel, the “Fantasist,” a painter of international reputation who was teaching at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia; while listening to an interview of his own on Bulgarian state radio, he discovered that it had a melodic quality characteristic of Ladino, as if his first childhood language was resurfacing and empowering him. Clair Levy, professor of musicology who studies rock, blues, jazz, ethnic music, and who, like some of the other interviewees, was called “chifut,” the pan-Balkan slur-word for a Jew, when in primary school. Nevertheless, when she reached the age to be issued a passport she did not consent to be identified as Clair Solomonova Levieva, but kept her original name of Claire Solomon Levy.
Maxim Cohen trained as a physicist, worked at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He later did Rabbinical Studies in Budapest, Bucharest, and New York, served as hazan at Sofia synagogue, and headed the children’s’ school at the synagogue. His grandfather, a merchant and rabbi in Razgrad, in northeastern Bulgaria, wrote Judezmo in Rashi. His grandmother told the kids gathered around the stove tales in Ladino. He remembers proverbs he heard from her and his mother. Other informants also mention the rich heritage of proverbs in Ladino.
Samuel Frances, the “Writing One,” a journalist, co-founder of the Association of Spanish-speaking Journalists, correspondent of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency in Cuba, of the Spanish International News Agency (EFE) for Bulgaria, and editor-in-chief of the Evreiski Vesti (Jewish News) newspaper of the Bulgarian Jewish community. A translator from Spanish, he was recognized by the Kingdom of Spain for his overall contribution to cultural interchange.
Itzko Finzi, the “Improviser,” a film and theatre actor and director, talented musician, and author of several books. He humbly narrates his memories of a Ladino-speaking family with proverb-quoting, singing, and dancing. Reina Liggi, “The Speaker of Seven Languages,” another octogenarian and dignified activist of the Ladino-speakers Club at Sofia’s Shalom organization who proclaimed that Ladino had not only enriched her life with job opportunities but offered occasions for enduring friendships with Spanish-speaking people from both Spain and Latin America. When asked where she picked up this archaic version of Spanish she responded “Lo aprendi de mi abuela que ablaba de Ladino.” When she said the expression “Mi sta comiendo las tripas,” she made two Cuban guys nearly wet themselves laughing, since the phrase is no longer used this way.
Leah Davcheva may have been seven or eight years old when the family crossed the Danube, the border between Bulgaria and Romania, from Romania where they were living, to visit relatives in Bucharest. Her parents who did not understand any Romanian were conversing only in “Shpaniol” with her elderly aunt who didn’t speak Bulgarian. Even at home, Ladino was the code language grown-ups used to talk about “hidden, secret things” the children should not understand. The only time Leah made a scene, shouting in protest was in Bucharest. As she writes, this endless muttering in a language she did not understand provoked a tantrum.
Davcheva, who associates Shpaniol, as Ladino/Judezmo was known to her, with feelings of love and endearment: quiridica mia, ermosa papuchika mia, my lovely dollie, izika mia-my daughter, my girlie, her father called her and her children, his grandsons, izikos. A few of the informants, among them Solomon Bali, refer to one of the first or few words in Ladino they remember, uttered by their grandmothers: the term of endearment, pashariko, my little bird.
The painter Andrey Daniel summarizes the matter thus: “We, creative people, are searching for our uniqueness, it is already given to us. This language exists as a marker of our otherness” (155).
Evidence for self-isolation and voluntary ghettoization is provided by Sophie Danon. Once while playing in a small park next in the Jewish district, the ball flew over the limits. She had never crossed the adjacent street, a dividing line between the Muslim and Jewish neighborhood of Ortamezar and the rest of Plovdiv. She had to briefly run across to catch the ball; it was a revelation: “There was a whole new world at large there!” When meeting, Jewish parents were saying to each other: ’I saw your daughter a bit beyond the mahalla, she has gone beyond the limits.’ What was she doing there? There was this fear that we might get into trouble” (123).
A painting entitled “The Books,” by painter Gredi Assa, well known beyond Bulgarian artistic circles, is featured on the page separating the first three chapters or the analytical section of Kaleidoscope of Identities from the personal stories.
In conclusion, in Kaleidoscope of Identities Davcheva examines the zones of interculturality between Sephardic Jews and the predominant surrounding Bulgarian language and society for the first time in a Sephardic studies publication in Bulgaria. She attempts to contextualize the continuity of the Bulgarian-Jewish community through the centuries, pointing out the multilevel significance of hospitality and loyalty. The term Bulgarian Jewry acquired additional meaning after the historical milestone marked by the foundation of an independent Bulgarian state in 1878. The loyalty of the Bulgarian Sephardic Jews to their Jewish roots, to the Sephardic tradition, to the family, and their language goes hand in hand with loyalty to their social surroundings, to their new homeland and its rulers. This is one of the reasons for the constant benevolent attitude towards, and treatment of, the Jews who came to the Balkans from the Iberian Peninsula. The loyalty of Bulgarian Sephardi Jews helped them to affiliate themselves with the new Bulgarian nation and become a part of it.
In the early twentieth century, teachers of Hebrew in some Jewish schools in Bulgaria considered Ladino a backward, anachronistic language; teaching and studying it was not encouraged. The language should not (and could not) develop and Hebrew would be the language of the future Jewish state. Davcheva’s unifying concept describes how living Ladino-speakers, to varying extents, use the language in everyday life to cope and progress, even though Ladino in the twenty-first century is a language under the threat of extinction according to UNESCO.
Today, Sephardim continue to live in national states such as Turkey, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Israel, and until the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, dwelled in Albania and Bosnia. Under the pressure of domestic and external factors, the community of Bulgarian Sephardic Jews has always managed to adapt to the surrounding cultural milieu.
This book is a contribution to Sephardic studies in Bulgaria. No such collection of personal stories has yet been published in Bulgaria. The very narratives, registered by Davcheva’s interviewees are a unique kaleidoscope of oral history. For the first time in a publication of Sephardic studies in Bulgaria, Davcheva examines the zones of interculturality between Sephardic Jews and the predominant surrounding Bulgarian language and society. Her unifying concept describes how living Ladino-speakers, to varying extents, use the language in everyday life to cope and progress.
1 Zdravka Mihaylova is a graduate of the Department of Journalism and Mass Media at Sofia University with postgraduate studies at Athens University. She first followed a career as a journalist with the Bulgarian National Radio and the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA) with special emphasis on cultural journalism and presentation of Greek cultural heritage and literature in Bulgaria, Bulgarian-Greek relations, Balkan issues, etc. Since joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1994,where she is now permanently based, she has had an extensive diplomatic career. Mihaylova is also a contributor to various media/websites among them the newspaper of the Bulgarian Jewish Community Evreiski Vesti (Jewish News).
2
From “Игрите”, The Games,
by much-renowned Bulgarian-Jewish theatre director and theoretician
Leon Daniel (1927–2008). Zahariy Stoyanov Publishers, Sofia, 1997.
In Cyrillic:
Унос кампос лонжис - (The road is long -)
ни перу ладра, но гайу канта!
(neither a dog barks, nor a rooster cries!)
In Ladino, story-telling begins with these words. In English they translate
roughly as "Once upon a time".
3 Dr. Leah Davcheva, founder of AHA Moments Centre for Interculturality, Solutions Focus, and Host Leadership, is an intercultural coach, researcher, and (co-)author of books, articles, and learning resources. She designs and delivers coaching programs for educators, youth workers, and business professionals, both internationally and in Bulgaria. Davcheva has contributed to and was instrumental in building the foundations of intercultural education in Bulgaria. She is the daughter of Solomon Rozanes (1919-2004), a Bulgarian legal expert and judge. He was the youngest child of four born to Sephardic parents whose family roots are in the Spanish town of Castellvi de Rosanes, near Barcelona, the only family member to remain in Bulgaria after the others immigrated to Israel during the early 1950s. In 1938, Rozanes enrolled at Sofia University to study law, graduating with some delay in 1945 after anti-Semitic measures were rescinded. From 1960 onward, he worked as a judge at the Ruse regional courthouse. From 1966 to 1992, he was the highest ranking judge on civil law cases at the Supreme Court of Bulgaria. He is the author of many legal treatises and books.