Four and a half years ago, on a fall day in September 2017, I began to write the story that would eventually become my debut picture book, Tía Fortuna’s New Home, and in Spanish, El nuevo hogar de Tía Fortuna. My goal was to write a children’s book that would introduce young readers to Sephardic culture. Most Jewish children’s books assume Jewishness stems from an Ashkenazi heritage. And much too often, if Sephardic Jews are portrayed at all in literature, they are represented as confined to the historical past rather than being robustly alive in the present. I wanted my book to offer a new narrative and show how a Sephardic auntie in Miami, on the verge of moving to a new home, is sharing her culture with her young niece.
I am Ashkenazi on my mother’s side and Sephardic on my father’s side. I grew up in New York with both Jewish cultures, hearing Yiddish and Ladino, as well as Spanish, for our family is also Cuban, which made for an even more interesting mix. I was closer to my mother’s family and their cuisine of gefilte fish and matzoh ball soup. Since I knew my father’s family less well, their traditions seemed more mysterious. I picked up bits and pieces of a Sephardic heritage, which included a nostalgia for Spain. I could feel that nostalgia in the chants sung with so much heart by Rabbi Murciano at the Sephardic Jewish Center of Forest Hills (where I was married).
It took years of travel and research in Spain and Cuba as a cultural anthropologist to gain an understanding of Sephardic culture. How could I share what I had learned in a child-friendly way? Sometimes our heritage can seem so melancholy, with our tearful kantikas in Ladino. I didn’t want to burden children with a sorrowful tale. I was inspired by the challenge of finding a joyful and poetic way to share with children what it means to be Sephardic.
It’s not so easy to write a children’s book. I revised my book many times, working to make the words sing on the page. Children’s books are meant to be read aloud and so they must sound sweet to the ears. But already in the earliest draft of the book, I had fleshed out two main characters – Tía Fortuna and her niece, Estrella. Tía Fortuna was inspired by a real-life Sephardic aunt who lives in Miami Beach and serves me borekas whenever I visit her. Though only sixteen years older than me, I feel like a little girl around her and that inspired the character of Estrella.
The borekas my tía serves are made every Tuesday by Cuban Sephardic women at Temple Moses in Miami Beach. This tradition has supported the congregation since its founding. The community emerged in the 1910s and 1920s with the immigration of Turkish Sepharadim to Cuba after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. My abuela and abuelo were from Silivrí, a seaside town near Istanbul.
Like other Sepharadim, they adapted well to life in Cuba. Their Ladino gave them a sense of familiarity with the culture and they expected to stay for generations to come. But those plans melted into air after Fidel Castro took power, confiscating private businesses, including street peddling (my abuelo’s occupation), and enforcing atheism as part of the new revolutionary system. The Sepharadim fled Cuba in the 1960s, in an exodus that felt like another expulsion from a beloved home in the Spanish-speaking world, and started a new life in the United States.
These different layers of departure – from Spain, from Turkey, from Cuba – come together in Tía Fortuna’s New Home. The story is set in Miami Beach and Tía Fortuna must say goodbye to yet another beloved home – her casita at the Seaway, which will be demolished to build a luxury hotel. Estrella has come to help her tía pack and say goodbye to her casita. It is Estrella who is sad while Tía Fortuna encourages her to enjoy the day and not think about mañana. Estrella’s spirits are lifted by Tía Fortuna’s acceptance of change and living in the moment, though her auntie wears many lucky eye bracelets and keeps many hamsas around, praying for mazal bueno. Tía Fortuna makes borekas for Estrella, filled with potatoes and cheese and also with esperanza, reminding her that her ancestors found hope wherever they went.
After Tía Fortuna closes the door to her casita and pockets the key, she says goodbye to the palm trees and they whisper back adiós, adiós, adiós, for the world is a magical place. Estrella’s mother arrives and they drive off. . . to Tía Fortuna’s new home. . . which turns out to be what we call a home, now often referred to as assisted living. Again, Tía Fortuna insists on finding hope and accepting a new beginning. Though now far from the sea, there are banyan trees that she hugs and that whisper back hola, hola, hola. And the butterflies flutter. As Estrella excitedly asks when she can visit again, her auntie whispers, Mashallah, God willing, as my abuela and abuelo would say, never assuming another day was a given, treating each day as a blessing.
With stunningly beautiful and evocative color illustrations by artist Devon Holzwarth that make the story come exuberantly alive, I hope you’ll enjoy this book, whether you get it for a child, or for the child who still lives inside of you.
Tía Fortuna’s New Home: A Jewish Cuban Journey
El nuevo hogar de Tía Fortuna: Una historia judía-cubana (Traducido por Yanitzia Canetti)
By Ruth Behar
Published by Knopf Books for Young Readers /Penguin Random House
January 25, 2022, simultaneous English/Spanish publication date
Comments