This is in a novel form but documents important events of history that happened. 11/8/23
The story starts in Constantinople in 1907. They live on the top of the hill in Fener, their neighbours where Greek diplomats Armenian doctors , Jewish bankers and traders like her father. The daughter of these and a few wealthy Muslims girls like the daughters Rebecca and Corinne went to Catholic school where French was the education medium.
The nuns take special interest in the Jewish girls and the school was founded by a German Jewish convert. They learn to embroider and dress by latest French fashions. The mother collects parcels for the Jewish orphanage. The father is a poor businessman and is fast burning through the family fortune.
Rebecca is a close friend of Rahelika and Djentil Nahon who is her mothers friend. Lika's father is a poorly paid teacher at the Alliance Israelite school and they don't have a holiday house.
Djentil Nahon is Rebecca's fathers first wife but could not fall pregnant.
In school the nuns take off their amulets but what of the wine as blood and the wafer as flesh. Rebecca's father is much older than her mother. Everyone knows everyone in the neighborhood. Her parents speak English over the children's head. At school they are learning about Florence Nightingale who died recently.
Her father Alberto lived in England for 5 years where he also studied Ladino, Hebrew and French. His 2nd wife Sultana had spent much of her life in Ireland where her father was a tobacco merchant. They had a summer house on the isle of Buyukdere. The father took off from work to garden back home as that brought him closer to God. When WW1 started the French school closed and a German school took its place Her friend Lika goes to America where she returns to school.
The Turkish State took over his already failing factory to make army uniforms and he lost the documents to get it back. Rebecca worked as a dress maker with no marriage prospects, Elsa and sons Josef and Marco at dead end jobs. Cats are fed in the street as they saved Mohammed but dogs left to starve. Their sons could be conscripted to the army. The Greeks Christians had been exchanged for Greek Muslims and the Armenians had been slaughtered. The Chief Rabbi moved to France then Egypt. Jews can go into a mosque as it has no idols but a church not.
1924 Istanbul The Jewish Refugee Committee offers Alberto a position as shamus (glorified janitor) at the Barcelona's new shull. He says he will be the hazan. Protegidos Espanoles are offered Spanish nationality by PM (dictator) Primo de Ravera. Spain was the origin of their lingua de leche.(language from the cradle) Spain had lost her Empire and regretted some past actions. The frailty of the succah indicates that life is transient.
Barcelona 1925 To go to school you need a certificate of baptism. The shull president is a German Askanazi. They must not mention that they are Jewish, but when Rebecca looks for a job as a Paris trained dress maker the name Cohen is not acceptable so she takes her mother maiden name Carmayor. The products made have a lable Fabrique de France. The Patron tries his luck on her so she sticks a strait pin into his arm, but is not fired because of her skills.
She sets up her own business as Rebecca Blanco Carmayor Couturere de Paris Modista Haute Cauture
Meanwhile Corinne and Israel are having their first baby in Cuba Saltanas first grandchild. Then they managed to get to NY. Lika in NY has a stillborn baby.
1926 Barcelona Rebecca is almost 24 and their are no Jewish bachelors. She meets Luis who works in a car repair shop and soon Marko and Isadora have jobs there. She married Luis to discover that during WW1 he fought in the Turkish army and suffers the after effects of mustard gas.
Rebecca gives birth to David but Luis has gone off ,he returns they have a second baby Alberto.
1929 She gets a message to come to Adrianople but is not met at the station and takes a cart there and finds it in a small village. There she meets Luis's sister Oro who has 2 sons who will later be esteemed rabbis in Israel. Luis's parents had wanted to keep her and grandsons there but she came with return passage and goes home.
1929Barcelona The film maker, films a documentary about Jews who fled Spain and the Spanish speakers of the Balkans. like Sarajevo Istanbul, Salonica etc. Half a million Spanish Jews. He interview the Barcelona shull and this is a document they can see later of her parents. Ashkenazim are now arriving in greater numbers. The Alhambra decree of 1472 has not been revoked. and the synagogue has no outward symbols. Rebecca father manages to arrange a small Jewish cemetery.
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1934 Barcelona the have been incidents of bombing in the city. Corinne suggested that Rebecca marry Samuel Levy her best friend Lisa widower. She has to leave a good business behind.
1934 Havana. She has to meet him in Havana as she can't get into the US. Havana has good architecture as it was build by slaves. He promises her that he is kosher at home even though he eats other thing in travel. She remember that when she visited client she ate their pork snack for business reasons. His daughter Luna is spastic but he does not tell her how badly. In Cuba there are lots of Jews and Jewish refugees in this Catholic country but they can practice openly. They have to marry in Cuba and then again in the US. Sam's father had abandoned his family and took up with a Cuban gentile. Her father had married and divorced his first wife as she was childless and her first husband had deserted her before he died. Samuel had to drop out of school and at 11 was already supporting the family because his father abandoned him.
1934 Astoria, NY Sam's mother dislikes Rebecca as Rebecca comes from a higher social class. At the local church there is a free program for learning English. America has a can-do attitude that appeals to her. Luna's doctor Dr. Carlson is in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy . When Sam's mother falls carrying Luna and breaks her hip she moves to live with her daughter. Rebecca works with Luna and forces her to be active and have speech therapy. FDR's paralysis does not stop him. Luna wants to be able to go to school but needs to be able to flee in a fire drill. It is the inside self that matters in the eyes of God.
1937 David works in the father candy store selling Snickers 1930 (laugh) David has a small part in a school play in English. In Barcelona Italian bombers drop 44 tons of bombs in 3 days and the synagogue is ransacked. Brother Marko's brains are beaten up and he becomes an invalid. Jewish Americans are going over to help (International Brigade?) Josef her brother writes Rebecca's father was malnourished and died of sadness. Sultana moved in with Elsa.
Rebecca has Jack, Susanne and later Frank father by Sam. Her friend Corinne and Israel move to Great Neck long island but you can't use public pools because of the polio scare.
1939 Cambria Heights , Queens are selling houses to Jews and Sam opens up his own newspaper , stationary and candy store. Papa to Luna , Pops to David and Al, and Daddy to Jack, Susanne and later Frank who is given an American name, the other kids were named after forebears
1942 Cambria Heights Luna does well in classes but can't make friends. She goes now to a school for crippled children but only the clever ones. she meet Brian Ahearn who isn't Jewish and has a limp. Mother says the girls got all the brains. There is nothing that Papa admires more than education.
1944 Rebecca's mother Sultana dies in Barcelona and Rebecca is in a state of depression. Three months later her entry her mothers to the US has been approved.
1945 USS Franklin aircraft carrier with a crew of 3500 is hit by 2 Kamikazes as after 12 hours of battle stations are relaxed, 50 miles from Japan. David was only 17 dropped out of school and Rebecca signed for him to enter the navy.. A wounded officer tells him to get off the inferno if he can. He drags a wounded pilot in the water to a life raft and they are saved by the Destroyer USS Marshal. Those who abandoned ship might be court marshalled as deserters, as they should have been fighting the fire. Captain Gehres refused to order abandoned ship as many would die on it and it is miraculously saved.
1950 Cambria Heights, David is in collage in Chicago. Al lives in Brooklyn and is an X-ray technician. From Barcelona Josef and Isadora moved to Israel.
The book ends with Rebecca on stage singing a Ladino song about migration and loss at a Jewish concert that includes Yiddish material. Luna comes on stage to present her with a bouquet and we find out that Luna is pregnant. - even the least amongst us deserve hope.
This is Writers 5th novel “Kantika,” unlike many novels of Jewish migration, is actually a story about a family’s economic decline, shown in the life of the writers grandmother Rebecca1902-1991 , who recorded the memoir with Sam retired in Florida. The writer's uncles and aunts David Baruch 1926-2021 and Albert Buruch 1928 -2015 as well as Luna Leibowitz 1927-2006 (also a writer) Jack 1935-2011
The 1929 documentary film taken in Barcelona Los Judios de patria espanola. Can be seen.
1964. Maimonides statue was put up in Cordoba
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