International Ladino Day via Zoom this Year

Translation by Janet MITRANI

The Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Cultural Research Center with the activities they organized, made Turkey become the only country that celebrates International Ladino Day totally in Ladino. Until this year, our activities starting at 11:00 in the morning would continue until 18:00. However, this year just like all around the world, the case that activities cannot be performed in any location due to the COVID-19 pandemic, forced us to celebrate International Ladino Day via Zoom.

We are aware that planning this event on Zoom has some advantages. Just as the participants, also audiences from all around the world will provide this day to be international in the real meaning of the word. This year having this in mind, apart from the other countries in the world celebrating this day, we will be presenting a three-hour program only in Ladino language.

During our program which will be enriched with participants from the USA, England, Argentine, and Israel, there will be short conferences, cooking, films, songs, and a documentary theatre play that has been written especially for this day and that will be performed totally in Ladino. The theater part of our Ladino Day has been very popular for three years. This year as always Forti Barokas wrote the play, and Ferit Kohen is directing it. The players are the group 'Amigos Para Syempre'. Since it is not possible to perform a theatre play through Zoom, we rented a theatre for one day, taking all the necessary precautions, stage shootings have been done with groups of 3 or 4 people.

This year our Sephardic Center which has always been a pioneer, once again prepared a program to everyone's liking, with the theater, music, film, food documentary, and the speakers. We took some precautions to prevent Zoom's technological disadvantages and to strengthen the internet connection to avoid interruptions in streaming.

As the Sephardic Cultural Research Center, we have been making many sacrifices to preserve, document, and teach Ladino (Judeo Espagnol). If you should want to support us for these issues, you can purchase one or more 'Certificate of Support' for International Ladino Day from the website 'www.istanbulsephardiccenter.com'.

Hoping to see you on Sunday, February 21st, at 16:00 Turkey time (07:00 Dallas, 08:00 New York, 10:00 Buenos Aires, 14:00 Europe, 15:00 Israel).

ZOOM ID: 981 0256 4439 Passcode: 687151

ZOOM link: https://bit.ly/3oV2rTT.

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