Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Literature
Authors: Borovaya Olga 
Published: October 2024

Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) literature was produced between the 16th century and the mid-20th by Sephardim, descendants of Iberian Jews who settled in the Ottoman Empire following the expulsions of the 1490s. Ladino, an Ibero-Romance language that emerged in the Ottoman lands in the 16th century, was used in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. Until the 20th century, it was written solely in a Hebrew script known as the Rashi script. Due to frequent fires, several wars, and small print runs, the extant corpus of Ladino literature consists of fewer than 4,000 texts.

The most significant factor in the history of Ladino literature was diglossia, that is, the use of two (or more) languages within the same speech community for different social functions. In the Sephardi community, as everywhere in the Jewish world, the language of religion, education, and law was Hebrew, while the vernacular served everyday needs and was used at home and at work. Since Hebrew was usually learned in a formal setting, those who had no access to education (mainly women) remained monolingual and illiterate in this language.

The wave of immigrants from Europe who arrived in the Ottoman lands starting in the 1530s was also unlettered in Hebrew. Converts or childrenof converts had lived in Europe as Christians. After embracing Judaism in the Ottoman Empire, they had to be educated as Jews even before they learned Hebrew. But having mastered the alphabet, they were able to read books in Ladino, which was similar to their own Romance vernaculars. This was the main factor that brought Ladino literature into existence. In the 16th century, Sephardi presses printed Ladino prayer books, treatises on science and philosophy, a Bible translation, Ladino versions of Hebrew works on ethics and law, and Hebrew-Ladino glossaries. Thus, Ladino served as a language of instruction not only for the unlearned but also for educated ex-conversos interested in religious and secular subjects but not yet fluent in Hebrew. Consequently, the 16th century witnessed not just the birth of Ladino book printing but also the use of the Sephardi vernacular as a language of high culture. By the turn of the next century, when converso immigration nearly came to a standstill, Ladino book printing also ceased. In the 17th century, few or no books in the vernacular were published in the Ottoman lands. A revival of Ladino print culture began in the middle of the 18th century, in the wake of the Sabbatean crisis, as a consequence of the rabbis’ conviction that Sephardim of both sexes and all ages illiterate in Hebrew needed a proper Jewish education in a language they understood. The rabbis produced a large corpus of Bible translations, popular commentaries, and ethical treatises. The second half of the 19th century was the only time when not all literary works in Ladino were written for educational purposes. While both secular and popular religious books were published in Ladino, Hebrew remained the language of high rabbinic culture, and French became a language of high secular literature, suitable for producing histories and memoirs, which means that a diglossic situation turned into a triglossic one. The output of novels, theater plays, and periodicals makes the turn of the 20th century the true golden age of Ladino literature. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of new nation states in the aftermath of World War One led to the decline of Ladino print culture.