The Island of Rhodes located in the Aegean Sea 12 miles off the Turkish coast was the home of a unique and vibrant Jewish community since antiquity. In the early part of the 16th century, a group of Sephardim found haven there in the wake of their expulsion from the Iberian peninsula. Their descendents thrived under the benevolent rule of the Ottoman Empire which enabled them to develop into a self-contained community with a distinct way of life within the larger Ladino-speaking Sephardi culture that flourished in the lands of the Mediterranean. Rhodes came under Italian domination in 1912. I remember Rhodes is Mrs. Levy's recollection of life in the home town of her youth. Although now in her seventies, she vividly recalls the people of her youth and their way of life, their weekdays and their holidays, their joys and their sorrows. She faithfully describes the town and its synagogue, the schools and the shops; the rabbis, the teachers and the ordinary folks. A special chapter is devoted to home remedies and superstitions; another is a veritable treasure-house of proverbs and expressions in their original Ladino along with English translations. A gathering of Ladino folk songs again with English translations, concludes this evocative memoir. Aficionados of Ladino, the Judea-Spanish vernacular of the "Rhodeslis" as the Jews of Rhodian extraction refer to themselves, will be delighted by the last section of the book, Mrs. Levy's original memoirs as she wrote them in her own Ladino mother tongue. In the author's own words, her purpose was "to weave a beautiful tapestry of our customs, life style and intense community life were so unique on this land."
by Rebecca Amato Levy