3
P
rince
of
A
sturias
A
wards
1981-2014. S
peeches
Laureates. Excerpts
There were two poems pinned on the window of the living room cabinet in my house. One was the
Hatikva
; an ode to the hope that one day we would return to the Holy Land and bring salvation
to the whole world. The Hatikva is now the national anthem of the State of Israel. The poem was
translated into Ladino by the great scribe of Sarajevo, Abraham Kapon, who was a colleague
of Ramón Menéndez Pidal. His translation speaks of the land of Israel, “where our forefathers
descended from, where the Kings of Israel rule. That is where our Hope lies.” The other poem
was
A Espania
. Also written by Kapon, it is, in his own words, “on behalf of the Sephardim who
cherished and maintained the language of Cervantes.” “Here is to our beloved Spain, who we call
our mother land; as long as we live, we will not renounce your dear language. Even though you
banished us, like a stepmother, from your bosom, we cannot help loving you as the holiest of
lands, where our forefathers left their parents buried, with the ashes of thousands of their loved
ones. Glorious country, we maintain our filial love for you, and send our glorious greetings.” These
two poems, to be found in all the Jewish houses of my small town, condensed the two ideas that
Sephardic life revolved around. The first is the hope that one day we will no longer be persecuted
and that we will find salvation in Israel alongside mankind as a whole. The second is a heartfelt
love for Spain. The Sephardim in fact have always loved Spain, and bear no malice towards the
Spanish people and their culture, even though they were driven out. Some historians ask why the
Jews that fled from Spain never forgot their bygone country and never allowed their filial love for
Spain to lapse. There is but one answer: of all the diasporas that the people of Israel have lived
through, only in Spain was there ever a Golden Age. Unlike other diasporas, Jews were not seen in
Spain as a foreign minority, but instead as an integrated and integral part of the land of Iberia. This
is why they felt hurt when they were made to leave the land where they had lived for almost two
thousand years. Only by bearing this fact in mind will one understand why the Sephardim held the
Jewish Spanish language, Ladino, in a sanctity second only to Hebrew. The most important prayers
for the Sabbath, and particularly those for the second days of Passover, were recited in Ladino.
Women said their daily prayers in Jewish Spanish, not in Hebrew. Many
Pizmonim
(hymns) were
translated into Ladino and were sung to the melodies of Spanish
Romanzas
. Fathers and mothers
baptised their sons and daughters in Jewish Spanish. Until the last great war, when many Sephardic
communities were wiped out by the Nazis, rabbi were only allowed by their communities to preach
in Sephardic synagogues in Ladino, not in the language of the country they inhabited.
Solomon Gaon
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for Concord
1990
Solomon Gaon (1912-1994) was
Chief Rabbi of the World Sephardi
Federation.
—
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for Concord on
18/10/1990.
