Adultery, Intermarriage, and the Theme of Group Destruction in the Eastern Judeo-Spanish Ballad Tradition

2 SHOFAR ADULTERY, INTERMARRIAGE, AND THE THEME OF GROUP DESTRUCTION IN THE EASTERN JUDEO-SPANISH BALLAD TRADITION Louise Mirrer Louise Mirrer is the author of The Language of Evaluation: A Sociolinguistic Approach to the Story of Pedro el Cruel in Ballad and Chronicle and is editor of a forthcoming collection of essays on widows in the literature and histories of medieval Europe. She is Associate Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Fordham University and visiting Professor in Spanish at UCLA. The ballads, or romansas, sung by the Sephardic Jews of the modern world recall in their themes and structures the medieval Spanish Romancero, or ballad singing tradition-a tradition vital in Spain at the time of the Jewish expulsion. Investigations into the. meaning of ballad singing amongst the Sephardim today thus inevitably raise the question of the relationship between these descendants of the Spanish Jews and the country from which their ancestors were expelled almost five hundred years ago. The fact that these ballads have been jealously guarded by the Sephardim for so many years seems to indicate a tenacious clinging to the group's historic past and to its Spanish roots. Yet it is difficult to conceive of the Sephardim as harboring great feelings of affection or nostalgia for the land from which they were so cruelly jettisoned. The question thus arises of why they would wish to continually pay homage to Spain in their songs. In analyzing the large corpus of texts perpetuated in Sephardic communities throughout the modern world, it becomes evident that ballad singing does not serve the purpose of keeping alive for the group the Spain of its ancestors , but is rather a symbol of identity abstracted from its historic roots and maintained because it has become a clear and visible sign of the essential character of the Sephardim.1 . 1As in the Sephardic community, ballads are still sung in many parts of the Hispanic world today. In this way we see the romansas not solely as a function of the tenacious defense of Sephardic "difference" but also as the preservation of a cultural Volume 9, No.2 Winter 1991 3 Ballad singing is a leisure-time activity for the group. Ballads are sung at communal gatherings, in parks, at bazaars, at weddings, and at family reunions . Largely disconnected from their important medieval functions of telling the news and documenting historical events,2 they identify singers as Sephardic, perpetuating the official ideology of the group that the Sephardim are different, and should remain different. For this reason, ballad singing helps to stave off acculturation and assimilation in the modern world.3 I would like here to focus on the manner in which ballad singing has developed as a way of maintaining group identity for Sephardic Jews in the United States. Examples from some recently collected texts sung by elderly members of the eastern Judea-Spanish communities of Seattle and Los Angeles4 show how the stories of the distant past have been transformed by contemporary singers into symbols designed to make clear to the group its own distinctive character. In his work on the Sephardic community of Los Angeles, Stephen Stern describes the lives of some of the earliest Sephardic arrivals as follows: The Sephardic newcomers to Los Angeles settled in close proximity in the south-central part of the downtown area. They lived between Sixth Street and Pico Boulevard and between Maple and Central Avenues. In such neighborhoods, the immigrant generation attempted to replicate village life on a small scale. Explained one middle aged woman: "The way our parents lived was very different from now. They all lived very close to each other. They depended on each other for everything. They stayed among themselves an awful lot. They never mixed. They had an English heritage that differentiates the Sephardim from other Jews and so staves off acculturation . 2Professional singers continued to tell the news through ballad singing in the Sephardic communities of the "old world." See Samuel Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman, The Judeo-Spanish Chapbooks of Yacob Abraham Yona, vol. 1 of Folk Literature ofthe Sephardic Jews (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1971). 3For a discussion of the use ofsymbols to counteract the...