Argentinean cantor highlights weekend at Temple Sinai

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Jews are everywhere – and, as we learn twice a month, so is The Jewish Voice.  Even if we didn’t bring The Voice to far-off destinations, the chances are good that there would still be a Jewish voice – that is, a presence – wherever we go.  

While the largest Jewish communities in the world today are in Israel and the U.S. (about 5 million people each), there are significant Jewish communities in Russia, France, Canada, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa and Hungary, with smaller communities throughout the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.  

The overwhelming majority of these Jews – about 75 percent – are Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, in origin.  What about the other 25 percent?  Most of us don’t know that fully a quarter of Jews today are Sephardic, tracing their homeland to the areas around the Mediterranean basin, especially Spain and Portugal. And most of us don’t know that from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries, Sephardic Jews were the dominant demographic in world Jewry, and their language, Ladino, was spoken by more Jews than any other language.  Nachmanides, Maimonides?  Sephardis!

Although there is debate about this, the oldest Jewish community in the Diaspora (since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE) seems to be in Rome, where we can find Jewish graves from as early as the 2nd century BCE.  However, by the year 1000, the largest Jewish communities could be found on the Iberian Peninsula, in Spain and Portugal, where there were few restrictions on Jewish life.  

This came to an end in the 15th century, beginning with the pogroms of 1391 and ending with the expulsion orders of 1492.  During this period, approximately a quarter-million Jews converted to Catholicism, and over half the remaining 100,000 chose exile, leaving the rest in the punitive hands of the Spanish Inquisition.  If there is lemonade to be made out of these bitter lemons, it is that the expulsion facilitated the spread of Sephardic culture both west and east (New World Jewry was founded by Sephardic expatriates), and especially to port cities such as Venice. From there, Sephardic influence ranged even more widely for at least a century.

Sephardic liturgy and ritual is significantly different from Ashkenazi, and often even differs from one Sephardic community to another since Sephardim migrated throughout the world and absorbed the customs of their host countries.  

At least some of Sephardic culture has been integrated into Jewry in general: Sephardim are are permitted to eat kitniyot (legumes) during Passover – and others are now, too; contemporary pronunciation of Hebrew here and in Israel is in the Sephardic style; and Maimonides is discussed in Torah studies almost every week.  Many of our most beloved synagogue melodies are of Sephardic origin.  This music is haunting in tonality, relying mostly on unadorned voice with lots of sliding notes (melismas), dominant drumbeats and texts of deep longing. 

While Sephardic culture is often said to be endangered, in many of the synagogues of the Americas, one can increasingly find Argentinean-trained cantors and rabbis. The Jewish population of Argentina is the largest in Latin America and the sixth-largest in the world, and the seminario in Buenos Aires has become the major source of clergy for Spanish-speaking Jews across the globe.  As they disperse, they introduce beautiful Sephardic songs and lively rhythms into what is otherwise largely Ashkenazi minhag (traditions).

One of the most versatile, soulful and energetic of the young Argentinean cantors is coming to Temple Sinai in Cranston for a special concert on Sunday, May 21, at 4 p.m. Gaston Bogomolni, cantor at the Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus, in North Miami Beach, Florida, along with his band, Malachei Mambo, will present an electrifying afternoon of Ladino/Latino music that is guaranteed to have us dancing in the aisles.  

The concert caps off a weekend of Sephardic events, including an Erev Shabbat service with Ladino melodies and, on Saturday, a special discussion with Pulitzer-Prize-winning author David Kertzer about his book, “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara” (soon to be a Steven Spielberg movie).  Prior to the discussion, there will be a three-week Readers’ Circle on Kertzer’s book and the world of Italkim/Sephardim. For more details, see the Calendar of Events on page 10.

DEBORAH JOHNSON is the cantor at Temple Sinai, in Cranston.

Temple Sinai, sephardim