A Sea of Ladino: From Spain to Israel – Where Next?

In collaboration with the National Council for Ladino Culture
Academic Advisor: Prof. Shmuel Refael, Head of the Salti Center for Ladino Studies at Bar Ilan University
Content Manager: Yaron Enosh
Dates: Thursday-Friday, December 24-25, 2015
Gilbert de Bottom Auditorium, Konrad Adenauer Conference Center

Thursday, 24.12
11:00 Registration
11:30 Opening Session: The Birth of Ladino Culture – Between East and West
Welcome
-Kol Haderech – Screening of a film about the fifth President of Israel, Yitzhak Navon, produced for the publication of his autobiography, Spain which Was in Jerusalem
Prof. Alisa Ginio-Meyuhas (Emeritus), Department for General History, Tel Aviv University, discussing her new book: Between Sepharad and Jerusalem: History, Identity and Memory of the Sephardim
Opening Session – Part II: The Return to Spain – Between East and West
12:15 “Going Back to Toledo?” En Route to Spanish Citizenship – Including questions from the audience
José Benarroch, President of the World Sephardic Union
13:00 Lunch Break

14:00 Second Session: Jaquetía – The Ladino of Moroccan Jews
Panel Discussion with Audience Participation
Facilitator: Prof. Tamar Alexander, Chairperson of the National Council for Ladino Culture
Participants: Prof. Jacob Bentolila, Jaquetía Scholar, Hebrew Language Department, Ben Gurion University, winner of the Nissim Gaon Award for the Study of North-African Jewry
Dr. Nina Pinto-Abecasis, Folklore Scholar, Salti Center for Ladino Studies, Bar Ilan University, winner of the Ben-Zvi Award for the Study of Jewish Communities
Dr. Susana Weich-Shahak, Ethnomusicologist, Jewish Music Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, winner of the 13th European Folklore Agapito Marazuela Award
Session accompanied by recordings of Jaquetía songs
15:30 Coffee Break

16:00 Third Session: From the Spanish Expulsion to Auschwitz
• The Partisan Haggadah: The Story of a Community in the Holocaust. The Jews of Bosnia-Herzegovina during World War II
Dr. Eliezer Papo, Deputy Director, Moshe Gaon Center for Ladino Culture, Ben Gurion University
• What’s the deal with Rabbi Kurtz? The Unsolved Story of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kurtz of Salonika in World War II
• “Nine Portions of Suffering” – The Fate of Sephardic Jews in the Holocaust
Prof. Gideon Greif, Chief Historian, the Shem Olam Institute for Education, Documentation and Research on Faith and the Holocaust, Chief Historian at the Holocaust Research Foundation, Miami, Florida and Professor of History at University of Texas at Austin, Texas
17:30 Intermission
18:00 Fourth Session: Ladino – A Taste for More
• Ladino-Speakers’ Cuisine As a Unifying/Divisive Cultural Element
Edna Asis, Scholar and Food Historian
• Israeli Prose with a Ladino Flavor
• The Judith Montefiore Cookbook

19:00 Intermission
20:30 “Stories About Yitzhak Navon” – An Evening of Personal Stories and Songs
Participants:
Miri Shafir Navon, widow of the late Yitzhak Navon
Naama Navon-Peretz, daughter of the late Yitzhak Navon
Erez Navon, son of the late Yitzhak Navon
Moshe Shaul, friend of the late Yitzhak Navon and former Deputy Chairman of the National Council for Ladino Culture
Haim Cohen, friend and Chairman of the Worldwide North Africa Jewish Heritage Center
Galit Giat, vocals
Kobi Zarko, vocals
Gila Hasid, vocals, piano
Yoav Finkelman, percussion
Moshe Ben Ami, accordion
Yaron Enosh, host