Ordinary People

A few months ago I discovered a little delicatessen on Nahalat Binyamin, near Ha’Aliya Street, that sells the best of everything: feta cheese and kalamata olives from Greece; tinned plum tomatoes from Sicily; Bonne Maman jam from France; preserved capers from Liguria; maple syrup from Canada; Dutch Gouda cheese; Norwegian red caviar paste in a tube; deep yellow Danish butter cut from a huge lump and sold by weight; Turkish halva; and, well, you get the idea. The place reminds me of the shop owned by the Greek grandfather in A Touch of Spice.

I don’t know what this shop is called. There is no sign on the door, and the three brothers who are the proprietors write the bill on scraps of white paper, adding up the prices in their head instead of using a calculator.

The brothers are soft-spoken and cultured, and courteous without being effusive. When one of them disapproves of my choice, a little crease appears above the bridge of his nose. When they approve, they smile gently.

One day I heard them carrying on a conversation in Ladino.

“Are you from Turkey?” I asked.

“Not really,” answered one of the brothers. “We are Castillian. That is, we lived in Spain for about 800 years. Then we were in Italy – actually, Livorno – for about 400 years. We were only in Turkey for 200 years. Then, about 80 years ago, we moved to the Land of Israel.”

I gaped at him for a moment, unsure of whether he was joking or not. Seeing he was serious, I said, “You are like a living history of Sephardic Jewry. I’d love to take your photo and write about you. Would that be okay?”

“Write about us? Why? Our story is very ordinary.”

If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds

Post meta

This entry was written by Lisa Goldman and posted on January 4, 2008 at 2:32 pm and filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

Share with others

7 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

Very nice story…Shabat Shalom !

1. Lior
on January 4th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Fabulous!
I’ve been struggling to find where my mother’s family originated before settling in Aleppo. I know a distant relation fled Turkey with one of the Sassoons and resettled in Egypt (I’m told there was a book published about this escaped in the 1920s). But we always suspected that we had been in Spain at some point. Maybe one day I’ll find out.

2. ED
on January 4th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
That is one of the things I really love about Israel – almost everyone comes from somewhere else and they have a “story.” And you usually get to hear it too!

3. Fay
on January 5th, 2008 at 1:10 am
So they are Palestinians……….

4. R.
on January 5th, 2008 at 4:55 am
Oh, PULEEZ blog about these human jewels. And, of course, they are Palestinians, as are all folks called who were born in the area before 48.

5. tamar
on January 5th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Reminds me of this old, old, Tom Hanks movie called Everytime We Say Goodbye (1986). He plays an American soldier during WWII (I think) that is sent to a Jerusalem hospital to recover from injuries where he meets and falls in love with a girl from a Sephardic family. They speak a lot of Ladino in the film and when the girl explains that her family is from Spain, Hanks asks her how long they’ve been in Jerusalem and she responds with… about 400 years. Worth seeing just to hear the Ladino.

6. Laura
on January 6th, 2008 at 10:34 am
maybe they are canaanite like my family are..

7. lirun
on January 6th, 2008 at 2:38 pm