Seattle sephardic

Calvo peddled fish until he started his own fish market in Upon arriving in Seattle, the first thing he did was go to the waterfront and breathe the air deeply.

Reassured it was salt water, he said, "I felt good, it was just like Marmara. David Levy would later serve as a hazan cantor in the first minyans of Sephardim. Unbeknownst to the three men from Marmara, there was another Sephardic Jew in the city in Nissim Alhadeff, from the isle of Rhodes. Alhadeff had become convinced of coming to Seattle -- just as Calvo had -- by Greek acquaintances returning home for a visit. They were overjoyed to find each other and to learn they all spoke Ladino, the old form of Spanish that is the language of Sephardic Jews.

Alhadeff came from a very large family and began to send for his brothers. More Jews arrived and joined the community in Seattle. Sephardim from Constantinople and Rodesto joined those from Rhodes and Marmara.

Bachelors traveled home to marry and returned, or they sent for their fiances. In Seattle mutual aid societies were formed to help the needy back home; these evolved into synagogues. In the first Sephardic child, Fortuna Calvo was born in Seattle. But the unification of the community into one body remained elusive.

The year they broke with Bikur Cholim, they joined together in a rented hall at 9th Avenue and Yesler Way to hold their own high holiday services. It was an experience they swore they would never repeat, as no one was satisfied; each geographic base had its own particular religious customs and liturgy. Before synagogues were formed and buildings were constructed, minyans met in homes and larger holiday gatherings took place in rented halls.

But one thing that remained constant was the attachment to worshipping among others from the same geographic area. The synagogue incorporated in Ahavath Achim Congregation, founded in , had a membership that called themselves, "Los Balkanes" from the Balkans, and it included the founders of the Seattle Sephardic community.

David Levy conducted services except for the reading of the Sefer Torah. Nevertheless the few Sephardim initially settled in the existing Ashkenazi community, thereby finding themselves a minority within a minority. Differences between the Ashkenazim and Sephardim were vast. The Sephardim smoked water pipes, drank Turkish coffee, and were more religious. Sephardim named their children after living relatives; Ashkenazim named their children after deceased relatives.

The two groups pronounced Hebrew differently from each other and developed different liturgical customs. Still, the Sephardic community continued to grow, and had tripled in size by Forty Sephardic families lived in Seattle by By the time the U. During this time, through the end of the s, the local Sephardic community was concentrated in Seattle's Central Area in the blocks between 12th and 14th avenues and Jackson and Spruce streets.

Only a few Sephardim settled outside Seattle, and many who did eventually migrated to Seattle to join the larger Sephardic community. Sephardim in Seattle were divided into two main groups: those from Marmara and other locations in the Ottoman Empire that later became part of Turkey, such as Rodosto and Gallipoli; and those from the island of Rhodes, also part of the Ottoman Empire but which became part of Italy in , and then Greece in So divided were the two communities that initially "a union between a Sephardic Jew from Rhodes and a Sephardic Jew from Marmara was considered intermarriage" Family of Strangers , Eventually the divide between the two caused them to split and create separate synagogues, both still in existence in The two communities were similar in that neither Rhodes nor Marmara were cultural centers but rather "small towns where educational facilities were extremely limited and where the general level of culture was low in comparison to Sephardic centers of culture" Adatto, Nevertheless, Sephardic culture enriched Seattle's artistic life with theater and art.

Leon Behar produced many plays in Ladino. His first play, Dreyfus , was first performed in and was sponsored by Ezra Bessaroth, with its profits benefiting a Sephardic Hebrew school named Talmud Torah. Behar even produced The Massacre of the Jews in Russia , which was a play about Ashkenazi Jews, but performed by Sephardic actors who spoke Ladino, which "helped to bring Sephardim of different origins together" Family of Strangers , The first Sephardim also maintained their culture with "nochadas The rich Sephardic tradition of romansas, proverbs, and stories were also preserved in by Emma Adatto, with the assistance of University of Washington anthropologist Melville Jacobs.

Unfortunately, in the s the Great Depression made it too difficult to continue funding the Sephardic Theater, which directly impacted the Sephardic Hebrew School, Talmud Torah. From the time of the first Sephardic immigrants to Seattle until the Depression, strides were made to conserve and maintain Sephardic culture through schools and art.

But pressure to Americanize and to learn English for the purpose of business and education made it difficult to continue doing so, as did the financial pressures of the Depression, which saw a decline in contributions to the school. Ezra Bessaroth ceased giving sermons in Ladino in the s. The Depression was part of the reason that the strong cultural foundations of the first and second generations of Sephardim in Seattle would not be maintained as strongly in subsequent generations.

But the crises and world events of the war, the Holocaust, and the creation of Israel, as well as the Americanization of the first and second generations' children in public schools, changed the Jewish community of Seattle.

Distinctions between Sephardic communities blurred, and the distinction between Ashkenazim and Sephardim eventually did as well. Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews gradually became more united in fighting increased discrimination, and intermarriage between the two communities grew more commonplace, although the separate synagogues continued to exist. A large Sephardic community migrated to the Seward Park neighborhood in South Seattle during the s, with some Ashkenazim following them.

By the s, the general Jewish neighborhood had broken up. By the s, distinctions between the Ashkenazim and Sephardim became even less pronounced and intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews in general was more commonplace. Although a relatively strong Sephardic population continued to exist in Seattle through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, much of Sephardic traditions, culture, and language was lost with the passing of generations.

As Albert Adatto understood the situation from his perspective in the s, the Sephardic community in Seattle "underwent cataclysmic changes and underwent tremendous transition. From a semi-medieval Moslem environment they moved to the fastest-growing city in twentieth-century America" Adatto, Older generations did not make concerted efforts to teach their children Ladino, so parents spoke in Ladino while their children replied in English, and fluency in the language was not passed on to future generations.

In some ways, the decline of Ladino paralleled the decline of Yiddish, but the decline in Ladino was more drastic.

This is due in part to the sheer difference in numbers of speakers. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, across the world there were only , Ladino speakers and and more than 7 million Yiddish speakers. In addition, Hasidic Jews continued to use Yiddish on a daily basis. No equivalent Sephardic group maintained a steady number of speakers.

By the second decade of the twenty-first century, most speakers of Ladino were older than 70, and the language was in danger of extinction. The drastic change toward Americanization forever changed Sephardic Jews, who were able to maintain and develop their traditions in the Ottoman Empire for centuries before immigrating to the U. Like any immigrant group in America, Sephardic Jews became more assimilated but, in a testament to their piety and dedication, their culture has survived in Seattle.

Despite declines in Sephardic traditions and the Ladino language since Sephardic Jews first came to Seattle, the Sephardic Jewish community in Seattle remains active and prominent. The strength of the community and a renaissance of interest in preserving Sephardic culture in Seattle have brought forth the possibility of maintaining tradition for future generations.

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