Short Women’s Prayers in Spoken Ladino During three Times of Crisis

Abstract

This article discusses a limited number of ritual incantations or short prayers, used by Ladino-speaking women during crises – birth, war, or drought. These prayers, transmitted from one woman to another, were chosen because they are absent from the two major recent books on women’s prayers – Aliza Lavie’s A Jewish Woman’s Prayer Book (2008), which includes women’s prayers from different ethnic communities, some in Ladino, and Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald’s Seder Nashim (2012), prayers from a sixteenth century Ladino prayer book. This article seeks to document those short prayers before they are lost. They are quoted directly from Ladino-speaking informers, and discuss their life experiences, cultural norms, and individual discomforts.