Curated by Jane Mushabac and Bryan Kirschen

Featuring: Rabbi Marc Angel, author and editor of 38 books, and a 2023 International Sephardic Gala Honoree for his decades of remarkable community leadership.
Rachel Amado Bortnick, teacher and founder of the renowned online group, Ladinokomunita, now in its 25thyear with 1500 Ladino-speaking members worldwide.
Elizabeth Graver, author of the groundbreaking 2023 Sephardic novel Kantika, and long celebrated for her prize-winning fiction.
Sarah Aroeste, singer/songwriter, and Susan Barocas, foodwriter/story-teller, a duo whose “Savor” program of songs and talk about Sephardic cuisine is garnering raves here and abroad.

Ladino is a bridge to many cultures. A variety of Spanish, it has absorbed words from Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, French, Greek, and Portuguese. The mother tongue of Jews in the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, Ladino became the home language of Sephardim worldwide. While the number of Ladino speakers has sharply declined, distinguished Ladino Day programs like ours celebrate and preserve a vibrant language and heritage. These programs are, as Aviya Kushner has written in the Forward, “Why Ladino Will Rise Again.”

Since 2013, Ladino Day programs have been held around the world to honor Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish. January 21st marks New York’s 7th Annual Ladino Day hosted by the American Sephardi Federation.

>© Rhodes, mid-19th century Sephardi & Romaniot Jewish Costumes in Greece & Turkey. 16 watercolours by Nicholas Stavroulakis published by the Association of the Friends of the Jewish Museum of Greece, Athens, 1986.