In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 3 What! No Yiddish? Growing up Sephardi in Peru Fortuna Calvo-Roth 16 To Evelyne—who helped me remember. To Julie—who made growing up fun. since my early training in journalism, I have spent more time working on lead paragraphs than on the rest of the story. As a result, I have ended up wishing I could ¤ll a whole chapter such as this one with beginnings. So far, it is clear that I belong in these pages by virtue of my Sephardi Jewish upbringing in Peru. Recently I heard that the Sephardi congregants in Lima were going to move from their ¤rst and only synagogue site, built in the nineteen thirties, around the time I was born, to quarters in the synagogue and community house of the Orthodox Ashkenazi community. My late father, a seemingly old-fashioned but actually forward-looking man, would not have been too surprised. “Everything changes, my dear, everything passes,” I can almost hear him saying. His eyes always twinkled when he laughed, a very quick laugh. “Somos hojas al viento, hijita. . . .” We were like leaves in the wind, he would sigh. You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. what! no yiddish? 17 My father, Isaac Calvo, was honored in 1983 on the ¤ftieth anniversary of the construction of our synagogue. My sister Evelyne, who has an academic background in history, researched the archives of the Sociedad de Bene¤cencia Israelita Sefardí and prepared a text for the commemorative video. When the congregation was established in 1921 (its ¤rst president, a Mr. Sasson, was a British subject of SyrianLebanese ancestry), services were held at a number of places, among them the Masonic Hall. Our father was a Mason in his youth, and kept the characteristic three-dotted signature until his dying day. At the time of the ¤ftieth anniversary, Papá, then in his nineties, was the congregation’s sole surviving founder and its ¤rst treasurer. Papá wouldtellhisthreedaughters—EvelyneandJuliearefourandtwoyears older than I—how he would go to his coreligionists, one by one, for a modest monthly quota to build the “cal” (kahal) or the local sefaradí,as it was known by everyone. Born in Turkey, he arrived in Lima in 1915, setupabusiness,andformanyyearstraveledconstantlythroughoutthe country to sell his wares, often on muleback across the mountains. Less than a decade later, he was one of Lima’s prosperous immigrants. Sephardi Jews may have been the ¤rst to land in the New World and be burned at the stake of the Inquisition, but the German Jewish community has the oldest continuous congregation in Peru, ¤rst called Sociedad de Bene¤cencia 1870 and later, almost as cryptically, Sociedad de Bene¤cencia y Culto 1870. Its founders were French- and Germanspeakingbusinessmenwhoarrivedwithfamiliesanddomesticworkers , and today their congregation practices rituals associated with Reform Judaism. TheJewishcemetery wasbuiltatthistime (the1870s).Among its founders was New York-born Henry Meiggs, who donated the land. He was a well-known businessman, railroad builder, and adviser to the president of Peru. A mountain in the Andes is named after him. Our parents and our friends’ parents lie in that beautifully maintained cemetery, which I visit every time I go to Lima. The tombstones include names like Cohen and Levy, Sarfaty, Behar, Lemor, Franco, Mayo, Varón, Alalú, Aragonés, Sevilla, Alhalel, Bueno, You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. fortuna calvo-roth 18 Cordoví, and also Goldenberg, Roitman, Prag, Nathan, Sterental, Edelman, Weinstein, Zender, Perelman, and Gabel; and birthplaces like Izmir (Smyrna), Constantinople, Novo Zelitza, Odessa, Bucharest , Warsaw, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Salonica, Cairo, Alexandria , Aleppo, Beirut, Jerusalem, and Chanakkale and Edirne. Our Jewish community shrinks while the cemetery’s population thrives. There were more than ¤ve thousand of us in the ninteen sixties. Today , we are about half that many. Our mother’s grave says Rose Penso de Calvo was born in Turkey and died in Lima. Technically, she died at St. Luke’s hospital in Houston, Texas, but she was only there for a few days. Her grave also carries an inscription from WIZO—the Women’s International Zionist Organization—to its founding co-president. In 1941, a Canadian by the name of Rachel Smiley established WIZO in Peru...

Share