Belonging to Exile

Belonging to Exile is an ethnographic and literary study of the different national geographies that appealed to Sephardic Holocaust survivors after World War II.

In this book, Judith Lin weaves an analysis of poetry, other literary texts, and conversations in Ladino, the ancestral language of the Sephardic Jews since before the expulsion from Spain in 1492. After World War II, contemporary Sephardic writers were faced with yet another decision of where to make their home. Each chapter takes the reader on an ethnographic and literary journey through different places that the Sephardic community has called home over the centuries: Jerusalem, Israel; Sofia, Bulgaria; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Thessaloniki, Greece. And while the book spans a wide geographical range, many of the conversations take place in the intimacy of the writers’ homes.

Lin uses many different kinds of texts, archives, and personal conversations as a point of departure to analyze Ladino poetry and how this writing was used to remember the past, to work through loss, and to construct a sense of home in different geographic locations. The Sephardic search for belonging is never fully satisfied amid a complex experience of exile, but through their writing, the Ladino language lives on.