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Há línguas que são pátrias. O ladino é casa. Em vias de extinção como uma língua quotidiana, há quem continue a querer fazer do ladino casa. Não é preciso falar. Pode-se cantar. Como Yasmin Levy.
O ladino está a morrer; o de Yasmin Levy é feita de acasos e é israelita de ascendêndia marroquina, por isso que não acredita neles. Sonhos sonhou ser veterinária. E depois de ser rações dos 350 anos da readmissão dos precisa da noite. A noite tem-na na voz, lhe soou a um castelhano “esquisito”: “Você é de Sefarad, não é?” Nieto sabia comunidades sefarditas. “Judía”, o sen- horas de fi ta com canções tradicionais a noite, “Judía”, a voz magoa, porque des sefarditas de toda a parte: por exem- sem o ser. Mais de dez anos depois, faria um documentário: “El Último Sefardí” para fi car. “Uau, uau!”, repete. E deixa última a trazer aquela língua nos lábios como se fosse pele e não “bâton” que se chama-se “La Judería” e nele Yasmin traz o ladino de onde ele partiu para se na: “Nací en Álamo”. E nos primeiros o ladino é o dia-a-dia. Uma geração que relutante pedaços das pátrias por onde título de “a primeira sefardita”. A pri- anos. Não é Espanha. É qualquer coisa em ladino e apaixonou-se. Pode ter sido porque o “sangue não esquece”, como lhe diz o avô, e Mor Karbasi, 20 anos, a história dos sefarditas. No capítulo católicos. Por alguma razão, Sefarad é uma “Portugal”: “crianças eram tiradas “Onde está a chave que estava na gaveta?”, católicas”; “alguns judeus mataram os pergunta um poema de 1984 de Flory Jogada, uma próprios fi lhos para não os baptizar”; das fi guras mais importantes do ladino, “Os meus “Sim, sou Louis Lopes Dias”, “foram salpicados com água benta antepassados trouxeram-na com muito amor. / Deram-na aos netos para que / a guardassem na Há esse mito das chaves que os sefarditas leva- ram consigo. A haver uma chave, essa chave é o ladi- no. O ladino abre a porta de casa. O ladino talvez não seja pátria, mas é casa, é intimidade. É por isso que nos concertos de Yasmin parece que alguém abriu uma porta de par em par. “Bem-vindos”, diz — é assim que explica o sentimento que quer transmitir com retratos de família. Abre a secretá- nas “performances”. “Bem-vindo a minha casa, ao ria e senta-se. Abre livros e dossiers re- meu pátio.” Nesta casa, canta como quem fala com o pai ou com a avó, que falavam ladino. Neste pátio, o céu está sempre estrelado, está sempre uma noite que não apetece que acabe, uma noite propícia para contar histórias. Yasmin espera sempre por esse compasso de silêncio que acomoda as emoções. As suas canções pedem essa pausa. Espera que não haja nenhum resquício de eco na igreja de Union Chapel, em Londres. E entra na canção seguinte. Entra sempre com uma história. Sem a história, explica, seria “apenas uma canção bonita”. Para uma mulher era uma vergonha cantar em público. As mães cantavam em casa, enquanto cozi- nhavam. As fi lhas escutavam. Aprendiam. Yasmin explica tudo numa voz muito suave, com ritmo de quem está à lareira. Sentada, segura uma panela entre as pernas. Os músicos por detrás dela nem se mexem. Não há instrumentos, não há microfone. Só para reconstruir a história da família. O dito de que a paixão se transforma em amor morre em Yasmin Levy. “Vem daqui”, e mostra a palma da mão esticada contra a barriga. Vem do se e imediatamente reco-nhece-se Frank Martin. ventre. É dali que nasce. E é por isso que a música é indissociável da vida. Confessa que canta, quando está no duche, que canta todo o tempo. O marido toca com ela. A música é vida, a vida é música, e “Quando como, como ladino”, explica. Yasmin médico de Goa”: “Um dia o meu fi lho Levy canta como quem come, como quem bebe, como quem ama. É a única forma de a voz ter po- der para atravessar almas alheias. Fica feliz, se preencher a fi cha. ‘Daniel Dias’, respon- em cada concerto, houver pelo menos uma pessoa deu o meu fi lho. ‘Eu também me chamo que decore a palavra de forma insistente: “Ladino, não seja só a aparência. Será também ladino, ladino.” Se alguém for para casa a trautear uma das canções em ladino mais famosas que Levy ensina à audiência: “Adio, adio kerida / No kero la Havia um tempo em que as mulheres cantavam as mulheres que não podiam ser destemidas, aven-tureiras, apaixonadas. Yasmin Levy podia ser a INTER IOR DA SINAGOGA PORTUGUESA E ESPA NHOLA, BEVIS M ARKS exótico, um nome que se distinga preso por ser católico — a Inglaterra panha católica — e se confessou judeu, interessar-se pelas raízes. “É preciso Um nome tem ressonância. nome com rosto. Foi pintado pela faz eco, provoca afecto. Às vezes, basta Numa gravura, leva uma mão ao peito e a outra estende a Oliver Cromwell. Com esse gesto, em 1655, Menasseh ben Israel abriu caminho, ou as men- Adio Kerida
Ladino is becoming a dead language, but there are people who try to keep it alive. You don't have to speak it, you can sing it, like Yasmin Levy published in Pública, magazine of Portuguese newspaper Público, December 2006 Translated from Portuguese to English by Susana Moreira Marques and László Fecske Ladino is dying; Ladino is fashionable – there’s no mistake here. It’s a language setting Once upon a time in Jerusalem, the Spaniard Miguel Ángel Nieto got lost and approached an old lady for directions. Nieto recounts in an interview to an online magazine (Televicio) that the woman spoke to him in what sounded like a 'strange' Spanish: 'You’re from Sefarad, aren’t you?' Nieto knew that 'Sefarad' was Hebrew for Spain, so he answered: 'Yes, I’m from Sefarad. You too?' The woman replied: 'No, not me, my ancestors.' Nieto couldn't let go of this language that sounded like Spanish but wasn't Spanish. More than 10 years later he would shoot a documentary and call it 'El último Sefardí' (2003) – 'The last Sephardic'. The lady speaking the 'strange' Spanish was a last Sephardic, one to carry the language in the lips like a skin and not a lipstick that you put on but then wipe off. She was part of a generation that was rocked in the cradle to the sound of Ladino, and to whom Ladino is the day-to-day. A generation that is dying and that will bury with them a language that survived for more than 500 years, since Jews were expelled from Spain, by Ferdinand and Isabel, 'the Catholic Kings', in 1492. Once upon a time in Seville Yasmin Levy, Israeli singer, was surprised to find out that the neighborhood where she went to study flamenco was called La Judería – the Jewish quarter. Maybe it was meant to be, she had to walk in the area behind the flamenco school and discovered a street which bears her family name: Levy. Yasmin Levy's life is made of coincidence, that’s why she doesn’t believe in it. Dreams are different. Before becoming a singer, she dreamt of becoming a vet. After becoming a singer, she dreamt of rebelling against her own history. Dreams can be undone. Destiny can not. Yasmin Levy’s Ladino is like lipstick, but one red like the blood running in her veins. She doesn't speak Ladino every day, but each time she sings it, it’s like wearing a make-up that shows her at her most beautiful. She doesn’t speak Ladino daily, because her father, Isaac Levy, died when she was one year old. He left her many hours of tape with traditional Ladino songs sung by people from Ladino communities everywhere across the Mediterranean: Turkey, for example, where he was originally from. In that street in Seville, Yasmin Levy realized that she had to treasure all those hours of recordings. We all end up like our parents – Isaac Levy had devoted his entire life to the The second album of Yasmin Levy is called La Judería, and in it, using Flamenco influences, Yasmin Levy brings Ladino back to its birthplace: Spain. Yasmin Levy likes to see it as a musical reconciliation, but not many in Israel would agree. Most think Ladino should be sung properly, that is, at it has always been sung. To stand still is to die – Yasmin Levy makes Ladino travel, and to travel is its nature. If someone would make a documentary about Yasmin Levy, maybe they could call it 'the first Sephardic'. She is the first of a new generation with whom Ladino is being One day Mor Karbasi heard Ladino music and fell in love. Maybe it happened because, as her grandfather used to say, 'blood doesn’t forget', and Mor Karbasi, who is 20, and an Israeli with Moroccan origins, believes her ancestors spoke Ladino; or maybe it happened simply because pop doesn’t make you cry. It is broad day light and the stage is set in Trafalgar Square, in London, to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the readmission of the Jews to England. Mor Karbasi does not need the night to come, she brings it with her voice. She sings an original song, written in Ladino, dedicated to the Jews who died in the Holocaust, especially, to the Sephardic communities with whom Ladino almost disappeared entirely from some regions, such as Thessalonica. 'Judía' – the feeling conjured is darker than the night – 'Judía, será tu nombre' ('Jewess, It will be your name'). My language is my homeland – when being told this idea created by Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet, Yasmin Levy opens her eyes wide – 'Uau, uau!', and she pauses for that measure of silence one reserves for revelations. The album La Judería doesn’t open with a Ladino song, but with a gypsy one: 'Nací en Álamo' ('Born in Álamo'). When hearing the first lines we are 'on the road', a sentiment which is shared with ladino: 'No tengo lugar / Y no tengo paisage / Yo menos tengo pátria…' ('I have no place / And I have no landscapes / I have no homeland”) Ladino is a language without a homeland, which, like a sponge, absorbed bits and pieces from the countries where Spanish Jews dispersed. Some went East – the Balkans, Greece, Turkey. Some went South to North Africa. Ladino’s homeland has not existed for 500 years. It’s not Spain – it’s something that has been lost, a 'Sefarad' where Jews, Muslims and Catholics lived together. That's why the word 'Sefarad' has such a mythical 'Where is the key that was in the drawer?' - asks the poem 'The Key of Spain' (1984), by Flory Jogada, one of the most important figures of Ladino - 'My forefathers brought it with great love. / They gave it to their grandchildren for them to / keep it in the There is myth of keys that the Sephardic Jews took with them. If there is a key, then that key is Ladino itself. Ladino opens the door. Ladino might not be homeland, but it is home, it is intimacy. That's why in Yasmin Levy’s concerts it always feels like someone has opened the door wide open. 'Welcome' – Yasmin Levy explains the feeling she likes to convey in her performances – 'Welcome to my home, to my “patio”. In this home, she sings as if she was talking to her father or her grandmother, who were both Ladino speakers. On this patio, the sky is always bright with stars, it is always evening, an evening you wish not to end, an evening good for stories. Yasmin Levy awaits the right measure of silence. Her songs demand a pause like that. She waits for the end of the echo in the church of Union Chapel, in London, and she starts the next song with a story. Without the story, she says, 'it would be just a pretty 'For a woman it was shameful to sing in public' – Yasmin Levy tells all this in a tender voice, as if by the fireplace. Women would sing at home while cooking, daughters would listen, would learn. Sitting down, Yasmin Levy holds a pot between her legs. The musicians behind her don’t even move. No instruments, no microphone, there's only Yasmin Levy’s voice and that metallic rhythm. The saying that 'passion becomes love' does not apply to Yasmin Levy. 'From here' – she presses her hand against her belly, that’s where it’s born. That’s why music and life are inseparable. Yasmin Levy confesses she sings when she’s in the shower. Actually, she sings all the time. Her husband is also her musician. Music is life, life is 'When I eat, I eat Ladino', she says. Yasmin Levy sings as if she was eating, drinking, loving. She is happy if, at each concert, at least one person learns by heart this word: 'Ladino'; or if someone goes home humming a famous Ladino song that Yasmin Levy teaches to her audiences: 'Adio, adio kerida / No kero la vida / ma l’amargates tu'. ('Goodbye, goodbye dear / I no longer want life / you made it bitter for me') There was a time when women sang about the women they could not be: daring, and passionate. Yasmin Levy could be the heroin of the Ladino songs she sings.

Source: http://www.euromedheritage.net/old/award2007/resources/adiokerida.pdf