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El objetivo del presente estudio es ofrecer un análisis semiótico de las endechas (cantos de muerto) que fueron transmitidas de manera oral e inter-generacional entre las comunidades judías sefarditas que se asentaron en el norte de Marruecos después de su expulsión de España en 1492. El método utilizado en el presente trabajo es documental y está basado en la recopilación de endechas que realizó Manuel Alvar (1969) en las comunidades judeo-españolas de esta región en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. En este estudio se concluye que el contenido semiótico de estos textos es relevante porque arroja luz sobre las costumbres y creencias mortuorias judeoespañolas medievales y el papel que jugó la mujer judía sefardí como agente de transmisión de esta poética lúgubre en lengua haketía, hoy en día extinta.

This paper reviews the outcomes of linguistic contact between the Spanish and Arabic languages from the fifteenth century until the present day. While much is known about the relation between these two languages during the period 711–1492, the current scope of investigation explores the variants produced by such contact. This study reviews the distinct cases of language contact in Ceuta and Melilla, as well as the Moroccan Judeo-Spanish vernacular of the Sephardim, Haketia, which developed in cities such as Tetuan and Tangier.

The book Dialecto judeo-hispano-marroquí o hakitía (1926-1952) by José Benoliel includes, in its final section, a glossary formed by almost a hundred pages that contains many words from The Romanace, Hebrew and Arabic heritage. This glossary is not merely a simply repertoire of lexical equivalences between Haketia and Spanish, but also includes complementary information about the uses and values of some words, cultural data and phraseological expressions. papel specifies the lexicographical criteria followed by the author in order to determine his lexical definition strategies and analyze this complementary and encyclopaedic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion of the processes of Spanish acculturation among Moroccan Jews deals with influences that Spanish Jews brought to Morocco both before and after 1492, especially their regulations establishing a considerable improvement in the status of Jewish women and restrictions on expenditure on the occasion of family celebrations. In accordance with the Valladolid Takkanot (1432), they forbade the wearing of certain jewellery and the display of valuable finery. These social and ethical-religious measures also expressed a concern not to expose property and people to the envy of non-Jews. The megorashim (newcomers from Spain) spread the Castilian custom of ritual slaughter of animals for consumption. The re-Hispanisation of the Judeo-Spanish language (Ḥaketía) was consciously considered among the descendants of the megorashim as part of their Spanish identity and collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution takes a diachronic look at the political, social, cultural and economic reasons behind the decline of Haketia, which has become one of the most symbolic icons in the collective memory of the Hispano-Moroccan Sephardic Jews in their new settlements. The article has three parts: it opens with a general section that introduces the concept of Sephardic Jew and sets out the linguistic varieties of this ethnic group; a second section contextualises the sociocultural and linguistic history of Sephardic Jews in Morocco after their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula and up until 1860, the year of the Spanish military foray into North Morocco; and a third and central section examines the causes of the decline of Haketia and the current situation. The article concludes with glottopolitical reflections on the evolution of this idiom, the tension between a colonised and a colonising tongues, and the role of language in ethnic-cultural identity, all of which prove how linguistic homogeneity and linguistic difference can be considered the result of ideological expressions in the social and political processes of a given region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to define the literary and linguistic characteristics of proverbs in Haketia in order to examine the proverb as an expression of ethnic identity. Haketia is the Judeo-Spanish lan-guage spoken in Jewish communities in northern Morocco among de-scendants of Jews exiled from Spain. We claim that the tradition of proverbs in Haketia possesses its own unique characteristics that ex-press the “voice of the group.” To isolate this voice, we analyzed prov-erbs in Haketia in comparison to their counterparts in other groups that belong to the same cultural context: (1) Proverbs from canonical He-brew sources (Bible, Talmud, and Midrash) that are commonly shared within the whole Jewish culture. (2) Spanish proverbs: The affinities with the culture of their geographical origin (Spain) that is shared among all the communities that speak the Judeo-Spanish language; Modern Spanish had a decisive effect among Haketia speakers. (3) An-other Judeo-Spanish group: the eastern Ladino speakers (we chose Sa-lonika). (4) The Judeo-Arabic speakers in Morocco, and Muslims speaking Moroccan Arabic with whom the speakers of Haketia inter-acted on a daily basis. (5) Finally, we examined unique proverbs in Haketia for which we could not find a counterpart in other cultures. For every group we posed a different secondary research question (such as theme, genre, language, or context) and offered a different method of research using analytical tools taken from different disciplines, such as literature, folklore, linguistics, and history.

This study is based on the analysis of some rare audio recordings from the first organized group tour of oiim (Jewish immigrants in Israel) from northern Morocco, to their former hometowns in Morocco. The tour was organized in 1987 by MABAT, the principal émigré association of northern Moroccans in Israel during the 1980s. I compare this 'free-style'-oral audio source with related printed-edited narratives, written by MABAT before and after the tour, showing an evolving tension between two forms of narration: the expected ethnic-oriented narration among individuals travelling together as MABAT members; and other 'extra-ethnic' narratives, encompassing contrasting spontaneous recollections from their childhood in Morocco. The conclusions reveal the often organized nature of vocally expressed ethnic voices; and the dynamic social environments that such voices represent, both before and after aliyah (immigration). The study offers a methodological and theoretical contribution to scholarship on ethnicity formation in Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]