What I've Learned from Stella Levi (So Far)

This is the most vibrant, imagery-inducing work that I may have ever come upon. The first half of the book is dedicated to breathing life into the long-since vanished world of Rhodes’ Juderia. I have always been prone to feelings of nostalgia for times that I never experienced.¹ This book exploits that tendency to the greatest degree, accentuated by stylized and interesting art interleaved within the text. Since I first cracked open its cover, I have been thinking ceaselessly about the structural features of the Juderia that induced specific behaviors and tendencies, which of those I admire and which of those I think are counter-productive, and how one would go about recreating an idealized version of this sort of enclave. Certainly an unexpectedly great book for people interested in the ways that urban environments impact their residents. Or people who like cities that sound like Acre or Jaffa.

Of course, it is also serious work about an issue of much import: that of the total, intentional destruction of life in the Juderia and all that that implicates. I used the word “vanished” above to describe what happened to the world we witness in the first half of the book, but this is wrong: it was annihilated. This makes the middle of One Hundred Saturdays a rather heavier read than its beginning. It is also what makes the book worthwhile—life is not a walk in the park, and there is beauty in its challenges. This work would be incomplete as an analysis of life in the Juderia without a discussion of its end. The two are inseparable.

One Hundred Saturdays is not even actually about historical events, so much as it is about Stella Levi herself. It is through her life—which so remarkably intersects time and again with the greatest focal points of change—that we learn about the shifting world. Stella is a woman of unfathomable resilience. This book is a treatise to her, a shocking and kind gesture from a close friend. The greatest gift one could divine from these pages would be a fraction of her insight.

The book was also valuable to me in that it forced me to confront my own biases. I am in many ways very anti-diaspora.² One Hundred Saturdays managed to challenge my anti-diasporic stance. Were I to apply to it the same standards as I do elsewhere, I should have been far more dismissive of life in the Juderia, Judeo-Spanish, and the culture expressed in the book. Instead, I found myself enamored. This is probably attributable to a combination of my unfamiliarity with Sephardic history between the Inquisition and 1948, personal connections and feelings of shame toward the Ashkenazi diasporic experience, and the charisma that emanated from every page of this book. I think the adjustment that I should take away is not a total reversal of my stance—the fate of the Rhodeslis must ensure that—but a softening.

I would finally like to extend a huge thank you to my wonderful mom, who recommended me this book.

EDIT: I sent this book to my TA from HISTORY81B last year, because I vaguely remembered that her area of research was something to do with Ottoman Jewry and thought she might be interested. Turns out she did all the Ladino/Judeo-Spanish transcription. Nutty.