Neue Romania 40 (2011), 45-75 The Changing Faces of Sephardic Identity as Reflected in Judezmo Sources David M. Bunis Jerusalem 1. Modern-day iconization of the language and culture of the descendants of Spanish Jewry In 1997, through the initiative of Yitzhak Navon – fifth president of the State of Israel, and with the cooperation of his partners, Moshe Shaul – for years the moving force behind Israel Radio’s programming in what he calls ‘Djudeo-espanyol’ and editor of its periodical, Aki Yerushalayim, and Aaron Cohen – former director of Michlelet Amalia, the sole high school in Israel at the time to offer courses in what the latter calls ‘Ladino’, The National Authority for Ladino Culture was established by the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem. The avowed goals of the Authority are the preservation and propogation of ‘Ladino’, as the National Authority prefers to call the traditional, primarily Ibero- Romance-based language of the descendants of medieval Spanish Jewry, and the culture created in it. 1 During its 13 years of existence the Authority has already taken significant steps to realize these goals. But it is not on the acomplishments of the Ladino Authority that we wish to focus our attention at the moment, but on the artistic emblem which serves as its logo. The logo of the National Authority for Ladino Culture is a scalloped arch in the style reminiscent of Arabic architecture in Islamic Spain. To the outsider having some knowledge of the history of the Spanish Jews and their many-named post-Expulsion language, the choice of this symbol may be puzzling. During the period often referred to as the ‘Golden Age of Spanish Jewry’, when much of Iberia lay under Muslim domination, it was Arabic – or Iberian Judeo-Arabic – which seems to have been the preferred spoken language of the region’s Jews. Varieties of Iberian Judeo-Arabic were also used in some of the significant written works they produced. It was only with the gradual Christian ‘reconquest’ of Spain that the Jews of formerly Islamic ‘al-Andalus’ made the transition back to Ibero-Romance, and they continued to speak somewhat * I was honored to deliver an abridged version of the present article as the Cynthia Crews Memorial Lecture at the Twelfth British Conference on Judeo-Spanish Studies, University College London, 24-26 June 2001. My thanks are hereby extended to the conference organizers for this privilege. I also wish to thank Mattat Adar-Bunis for important comments on the article from a sociological perspective. – My thanks to Michael Studemund-Halevy for his help with some of thebibliographical details. 1 The language has also been called S-/Španyol(it), Ǧud ezmo, Ǧi-/Ǧud yó and other names.