For Rebecca, a Sephardi Jewish girl, 1907 Constantinople was “the beautiful time.” Secure in the love and material comfort of her family, her exceptional success in school and her sisterly relation with her best friend, Rahelika (Lika), the rhythm of Rebecca’s daily life was a sweet harmonious song.
The harmony ended after WWl, when, in 1924 the Ottoman Empire began to crumble. Once the ancient Byzantine capital become Istanbul, under Turkish governance, the Jews fell on hard times. Rebecca’s father, Alberto Cohen’s textile business collapsed, Rebecca’s school closed. Lika, and her family, left for America. Other Jews head for British Mandated Palestine or England. The Cohens, Alberto Sultana and Rebecca settled in Barcelona, Spain where Alberto accepted the position of Shamash, a caretaker, of a small synagogue hoping “El Dyo” would finally allow them to live peacefully as Jews.
Kantika (song, in Ladino) inspired by Rebecca Cohen Baruch Levy, the author’s maternal grandmother illuminates the long migration and displacement of a Sephardi family from their Turkish homeland. Enhanced by a treasure trove of photographs author Elizabeth Graver follows Rebecca, a young girl who must adapt to Spain, an inhospitable new country as her new home. Her formal education curtailed, the culturally submissive Rebecca obligingly marries a ne’er do well, the “feebleminded” philandering husband, Louis. Rebecca supports her family working as a seamstress.
Ever resilient, Rebecca adopts a less Semitic sounding name. She reinvents herself as Marie Blanko to become a successful dress designer to the Spanish upper crust. Yet she feels out of place, always looking over her shoulder in Spain, a country where centuries earlier her ancestors were exiled and continues to reverberate with echoes of Judophobia.
A widow in 1930, Rebecca receives a letter from her married sister, Corinne in Havana Cuba. The long letter contains sad news about their childhood friend Lika who died in childbirth in America. It also provides Rebecca with an opportunity to leave Spain. It’s an offer of marriage from Lika’s widowed husband Sam, who’s been desperately seeking a new wife and a mother to care for his physically handicapped but bright little girl, Luna. Pragmatic, aware of the potential to improve the lives of her own two boys, Rebecca travels to meet Sam in Havana, a return ticket securely sewn into her dress just in case things don’t work out. It’s only after her marriage to Sam that Rebecca faces the greatest challenge of her life when she becomes “Newmother” to Sam’s daughter, Luna, who is nothing short of “an animal” when Rebecca first sees her. So severely handicapped she is labeled, “a throwaway child.” Can Rebecca once again turn her tragic life into a harmonious Kantika?
In part fact, in part fiction, that inspires as it fascinates, the chapters about a family raising a handicapped child with boundless love and devotion are particularity heartfelt and insightful.