Belonging to Exile

An ethnographic and literary study of the different national geographies that appealed to Sephardic Holocaust survivors after the war.Belonging to Exile: Sephardic Homelands through Poetry 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, much of content takes place in the intimacy of the writers’ homes.