Editor's Note, Volume 15, Issue 1, Winter 2025
Dear Readers of Sephardic Horizons,
We bring you a new issue of our literary, cultural and scholarly journal. We hope you will be surprised and inspired by some of our offerings.
Lauren Weiner’s landmark essay, “Another Bureaucratic Dance for the Sephardim:The Iberian Naturalization Laws of 2015” revisits the Iberian passport application processes for Sephardim, offered in 2015. She covers the literature and updates these issues through profound and uncompromising research. Though many have been disappointed and have felt let down, small windows of opportunity still exist, she discovers. The hope is that, despite manufactured scandals, Spain and Portugal may yet redeem themselves in the eyes of Sephardim around the world who have submitted applications only to see them fall into bureaucratic black holes. Her lively and elegant writing makes it a privilege to publish this trenchant analysis, a truly professional investigation.
Our longer items also include an essay by the well-known Sephardic novelist and rabbi, of Syrian origin, Haim Sabato. It was written to mark one year of war for Israelis, for the holiday of Simchat Torah last October, 2024. It plumbs the pain, courage and resilience of a country whose fighting army consists of civilians torn from their everyday lives for months at a time, trained not only in their professions but as soldiers who must risk their lives and sometimes sacrifice them for their people. The cruel logic of this situation, and its spiritual ramifications, concerned Haim Sabato in September and unfortunately is still valid no less today. It is deep pain and spiritual questioning that occupy Haim Sabato’s razor-sharp mind and his resultant essay. Like Shai Agnon, to whose lyrical prose Sabato’s has been compared, suffering has crystallized his thinking and writing, and he asks deep questions. Michael Lowy’s excellent translation allows us to glimpse this.
Marvin J. Heller again grants us the privilege of the initial publishing of two pieces of research on early Sephardic printing, one on the medieval Sephardic Kabbalist Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, and the other on Judah ha-Levi ben Isaac ibn Shabbetai and his medieval Jewish satires.
Our Ladino/Judeo-Spanish section includes a bilingual offering by the professor of Spanish and medieval Spanish studies, Beatriz Gómez Acuña, entitled “Kaminitos de Leche I Miel,” a little gem that encompasses centuries of Sephardic suffering, in as few words as possible. It is hard to imagine a more economical yet personal piece of writing, almost like a haiku, that can yet touch us emotionally.
Our review section is overflowing, with reviews of books on children’s literature, histories such as one on responsa, and literary writing such as a seminal novel from 1930, newly translated.
Thank you so much to all our authors, translators, and reviewers, Sephardic Horizons could not exist without you! And thank you to Annette B. Fromm, our associate editor, and to Altan Gabbay, our webmaster, for your invaluable work.
Anyada Buena from Judith Roumani, editor
PS. Calling all Sephardic scholarly book authors! Bloomsbury Publishers have taken over the series in Sephardi and Mizrahi studies, previously published by Rowman and Littlefield. The series editors are myself and Professor Jane Gerber. Do consider sending us your book proposals for possible publication by this prestigious and scholarly press. Final manuscripts do not have to exist yet if you have a solid, well thought out proposal. Please write to me for guidelines at sephardichorizons@gmail.com.