Judeo-Spanish — also called Djidió, Judezmo, and, increasingly, Ladino — is the linguistic legacy of the Sephardic Jews expelled from Portugal and Spain in the late fifteenth century. Critically endangered, Judeo-Spanish is a language in which diasporic Jewish communities throughout North Africa and the Levant, Southern Europe, and the Americas composed numerous works of intellectual, social, and literary significance. The distinguished literary record of diasporic Sephardic Jewry has not always received the scholarly attention it well merits — a lacuna that I aim to rectify through my teaching and research on Judeo-Spanish cultural production in deep time.
At Harvard and the University of California–Berkeley, I have overseen the creation of courses on the Ladino language and Sephardic intellectual culture. Launched in 2023, Beginning Ladino: Sephardic Literature and Culture in Deep Time is one of the only courses in the United States to expose students to nearly a millenium of Sephardic literary production, covering the distance between Hebrew poetry in Al-Andalus and satirical Ladino periodicals issued in early twentieth-century New York. Grounded in literary and cultural studies as well as theories and practices of translation, the course bolsters students' reading and research ability in Ladino while developing their basic conversational competencies and familiarity with the precepts of Sephardic studies and Ibero-Jewish history.
Given the limited range of textbook options for the lately renascent language, I have developed my own coursebook for Elementary Judeo-Spanish/Ladino, which I am eager to adapt for use by other instructors of historical Jewish languages at a wide variety of educational institutions. I welcome contact from revitalizationists, linguists, and curriculum designers interested in collaborating on this project.
I have also partnered with local linguists, activists, and cultural organizations outside academia to highlight the intellectual diversity of the Sephardic tradition and pilot innovative methods of language revitalization. My research, translations, and course design in Sephardic Studies have been supported by grants and awards from Spain's Ministry of Culture and Sport, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Vilna Shul, and Harvard's Office for Undergraduate Course Innovation.
Adam Mahler created the first-ever courses in Ladino language and literature at Harvard and UC–Berkeley; Berkeley has continued to expand its course offerings in Judeo-Spanish in the years since. Mahler adopts a syncretic approach to Ladino instruction that blends archival sources in the longue durée with contemporary, speech-forward revitalization techniques. He produced a textbook for his course, which he's currently in the process of adapting for publication.