This lecture was held at Pardes as part of the Tisha B’Av program 2015.
Bouena Sarfatty was born in Salonika in 1916 to an eminent Sephardi family. Unlike the rest of her family, she survived the Holocaust because she joined the Greek partisans. Once resettled in Montreal, she recorded her memories of Jewish life in 20th Century Salonika by composing poems (coplas) in Ladino and by writing her memoirs in 1975 following a visit to Israel. This session will examine some of her poetry in translation alongside portions of her memoirs and see how Bouena assessed the experience of her beloved community as well as her own life.
