Acknowledgments
The acknowledgements have become my favorite parts of academic books. I love glimpsing the humanity of the scholar and the web of social relations and life experiences behind the scholarship. The myth of sole authorship is temporarily suspended, and we get a sense of the worlds of others’ words that populate the text.
The acknowledgements are also historiographic indices. As I write these words in a coffee shop in lush Palmetto Bay, Florida, my teen and tween children sit next to me, perusing their devices. When I started this project in Bloomington, Indiana, neither one was a twinkle. The world has flipped and twisted beyond recognition since then, launching our family from place to place, home to home, job to job. Along with the challenges, each move supplied us with a fresh layer of love and support and added something new to this book. Prepare yourself for a journey through these archaeological strata.
Starting at Indiana University where this project began, I wish to thank my dissertation mentors and advisors Dick Bauman, Frances Trix, Matthias Lehmann, and Joëlle Bahloul. Dan Suslak, in particular, closely guided this work from the start and has provided ongoing support. Sarah Bunin Benor started out as an external committee member and progressed to collaborator and dear friend. Many other professors and colleagues at IU made it a place where I could thrive. While a student, parts of this research were supported by the IU Anthropology Department, the IU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Tinker Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Central States Anthropological Society.
As the ethnographer’s presence inevitably impacts the people and places that constitute “the field,” so, too, does the field shape the ethnographer. The main research period of 2008–2009 was a formative time in my life, as it was for those who participated in this research. Many of the Jewish learnings and practices my husband Josh and I experienced in Mexico City came to play an important role in our own family. We host weekly Shabbat dinners, recite Friday night blessings over our children, and keep a (somewhat) kosher home—things neither of us did growing up. As a person of Baghdadi Jewish heritage raised far from any community outside my own family, I am deeply grateful to Mexico City’s Shami and Halebi communities for the opportunity to immerse myself in Middle Eastern—dare I say, Arab—Jewish life. This experience only grows more precious with each passing year.
My research would not have gotten past day one without my padre mexicano, Mr. André Moussali, whom I was fortunate to have as a landlord during my first visit in Mexico City in 2006. He brought me along to synagogue and made many key introductions to community leaders. I am indebted to him, his wife Mrs. Estelle Cole (z”l), and their family for the warm support (and many Shabbat meals) provided throughout my visits to Mexico. Leonor Cobos and Dario Lopez were my helpful neighbors during pre-dissertation fieldwork and remain dear friends. Among the Jewish Mexicans who have helped me in various ways are Renée Dayan, Elena Achar, and other staff at the Tribuna Israelita, Mauricio Lulka of the Cómite Central, Marcos Metta Cohen, Rabbi Nisso Palti and Yaffa Palti, Veronica Klipstein of the Amigos de la Unviersidad Hebraica de Jerusalén, May Achar, and David and Dalia Ciralsky. Several Shami and Halebi Jajamim (rabbis), whose names I won’t include for the sake of anonymity, showed me nothing but kindness and shared spiritual wisdom that guides me to this day. Other important sources of intellectual exchange include Ivonne Saed, Raquel Torenberg, Alicia Gojman de Backal, Monica Unikel, Daniel Fainstein, Paulette Kershonovich, Keren Shavit, Silvia Hamui, Daniela Glazer, Jacobo Sefamí, Nejemye Tenenbaum, Tamara Gleason Freidberg, Deborah Roitman, and Gloria Sacal. Thanks to Salomón Askenazi for allowing me to use his name and his story in this book. Liz Hamui de Halabe deserves special thanks for so generously sharing her time and expertise in guiding this research, right up to the time of publication. Finally, I am forever grateful to the many people who gave their time and perspective as research participants, many of whom have become lifelong friends.
Tim Wright and the rest of the staff at Comexus provided essential support for my fieldwork, as did my Fulbright colleagues in Mexico—Jennifer Josten in particular. Pedro Martín Butragueño of the Colegio de México took an early interest in my research and provided me with an institutional home while in Mexico City. A highlight of every month during my main fieldwork period was meeting with him and the members of the Grupo de Investigadores de Sociolingüística to talk about language and social life in Mexico: Julio Serrano, Dinorah Pesquiera, Leonor Rosado, Alonso Guerrero, Armando Mora, and Leonor Orozco. Adriana Salas, another ColMex linguist, provided me with excellent transcription services as well as insightful reflection on my analysis (not to mention babysitting when I traveled with my infant son). I was later introduced to Anayeli Hernández Cruz, an important thought partner and collaborator, who has produced excellent research on Yiddish among four generations of Ashkenazi Mexicans and continues to investigate contemporary Jewish Mexican language practices.
While I was a professor at the University of Puerto Rico (2013–2019), my colleagues in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology were unparalleled intellectual companions and champions of this work. They read and provided feedback, assigned it to their students, and invited me to present in various forums. They include Jorge Giovannetti, Lanny Thompson, Juan José Baldrich, Jaime Pérez, Bárbara Abadía Rexach, Viviana de Jesús Monge, Waleska Sanabria, Isabel Rivera Collazo, Lidia Marte, Karen Hoffman, Ángeles López Santillán, Marie Carmen Ramos Colón, Mildred Santiago, Jesus Tapia, Madeline Román, Arturo Torrecilla, Denise Bird Cruz, and Edwin Crespo (z”l). In other departments, Maya Vélez, Juan Caraballo Restos, Bruno Ferrer Higueras, Don Walicek, Alicia Pousada, José Rivera, Carlos Guilbe, Hector Martínez, Delano Lamy, Jessica Adams, Tania David, and others supported me and this work. Invaluable student assistants included Nicole Dávila and Frank Aquino Ruiz. Mentee-cum-colleague Sara Castros helped me update literature before publication. Research grants from the University of Puerto Rico supported trips in 2014 and 2017. Our synagogue Shaare Tzedek and its director, Diego Mandelbaum, provided me with community forums for presentation and discussion. Countless other friends in San Juan supported our family, and therefore my scholarship, through these beautiful but challenging years, and each one has left an indelible mark on our hearts.
I have presented parts of this work at multiple conferences, including those of the American Anthropological Association, Latin American Jewish Studies Association, Latin American Studies Association, Sociolinguistic Symposium, Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics, Symposium about Language and Society, Austin, and the Association for Jewish Studies. I am thankful to the latter, in particular, for their support of this research through the Berman Foundation Early Career Fellowship, the Paula E. Hyman Mentoring Fellowship, and the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award.
I conducted library research for the book at the University of Michigan in summer 2016 through a program for UPR professors facilitated by Lenny Ureña Valero. The University of Florida in Gainesville hosted me during a brief and tumultuous post-Hurricane Maria period in 2017, allowing me to make important contacts and presentations in multiple departments. Thanks especially to Catherine Tucker and Jack Kugelmass for welcoming me into the UF Centers for Latin American Studies and Jewish Studies, respectively. In 2018–2019 Jorge Duany and other members of the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center hosted me as a Visiting Researcher at Florida International University in Miami, providing critical resources for writing the manuscript. Thanks to the FIU Jewish Museum and our synagogue, Bet Shira Congregation, for hosting me for presentations.
There are so many other colleagues that have accompanied me on this journey, as co-authors and co-presenters, mentors, readers, and discussion partners. I am sure to forget many important names, but among them are the following, in no particular order: Seth Ward, Susana Skura, Mintzi Auanda Martínez Rivera, Camila Pastor de María y Campos, José Najar, Mijal Biton, Devin Naar, Rosalyn Negrón, Sharoni Sibony, Marquesa Macadar, Galey Modan, Julia Philips Cohen, Angela Glaros, Netta Avineri, Jennifer Boles, Jeff Lesser, Alexandra Jaffe (z”l), Ruth Cernea (z”l), Kathryn Woolard, Monique Balbuena, Natasha Zaretsky, Susana Skura, Amy Simon, Michelle Campos, Sara Imhoff, Zohra Ismail, Kimberly Marshall, Meredith Johnson, Nancy Lutz, and Misha Klein. Many thanks to Ben Hary for assisting me in my analysis of Arabic heritage words. The Jewish Academic Mamas Group on Facebook was always at the ready with resources both professional and personal.
Since departing academia in 2019, I have been moved by the unwavering support of these and other colleagues. Through personal health challenges and one global crisis after another, their encouragement sustained this project. Future intellectual historians, please research the ways in which informal support networks kept scholarship going, against all odds, through the most difficult conditions in the 2010s and 2020s (and likely beyond). Marcy Brink has been there for me throughout. My virtual writing group, Laura Limonic, Galeet Dardashti, and Adriana Brodksy, kept the book moving through the COVID-19 pandemic. Adriana Brodsky and I continue to write together biweekly; I would not have made it across the finish line without her providing motivation and accountability. Thanks to Ayala Fader and other participants of her New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies at Fordham University—Michal Raucher, Orit Avishai, and Hugo Benavides—for their considerate feedback on Chapter 3 of this book in 2022. Thanks again to Sarah Bunin Benor for involving me as an advisor to her organization, The Jewish Language Project at Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, and for hosting me in the inaugural episode of the podcast “Heritage Words” (2024), dedicated to spreading awareness and promoting research about the concept across Jewish sociolinguistic contexts. Last but not least: thanks to Erin Corber, Devi Mays, and Jessica Carr—my lifeline and winning EDJE. Devi, in particular, has been a key interlocutor whose insights helped me hone the analysis in substantial ways.
My post-academic workplaces have supported this project by allowing me to use working hours to write. The first was Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, including the Victor Center for the Prevention of Jewish Genetic Diseases and the Personalized Medicine and Health Outcomes Program, where I worked first as an Outreach Associate and then Research Manager from 2019 to 2023. Since April 2023, I have been blessed to work with incredibly supportive and intellectually stimulating colleagues at Rosov Consulting, who have cheered me on in these final stages.
Thanks to Petra Shenk for her insightful content editing and Lea Greenberg for skilled copyediting. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers of this and other iterations of the manuscript. I am grateful to Ranaan Rein for his longtime support as a mentor, colleague, and now editor of the Jewish Latin America Series at Brill, where he and the other staff worked efficiently to get this book into print.
Moving to the personal domain: There are too many aunts, uncles, and cousins around the world to name individually, but many of them supported this work intellectually, emotionally, or financially, and I am grateful to them all. I will mention fellow author/publisher cousins J.L. Gribble, Beth Daugherty, and Tim Mallon for their professional advice and encouragement; uncle Benito Mares for supporting my scholarly endeavors; and cousin Jennifer Dean for her help in our early days in Puerto Rico. My parents-in-law Marilyn and Ronald Olmsted deserve special thanks, as do my sister- and brother-in-law Dara and Brian Silverstein. Without their help, this book would not exist.
My first teachers and forever cheerleaders are my parents, Lawrence Dean and Josephine Mares Dean, who modeled voracious reading, beautiful writing, intellectual curiosity, artistic sensibility, a passion for justice, and, most importantly, unconditional love. Thank you for always reading me.
Thank you to my children, Jacob Olmsted and Leila (Wren) Olmsted, for their patience and sacrifice as this other, overgrown sibling demanded so much of your mom’s time. Fenster (z”l) and O-ren (z”l) were my best, furry research assistants in Mexico City. They, along with Salvador (z”l), Loba, Clover, Frejya, and Loki, have contributed vital companionship and occasional unauthorized edits.
And finally, thank you to my husband Josh, without a doubt the most important partner in this work. From analytical sounding board, to proofreader, to household operations overseer and emotional support—not a word would be written without you. My stunning mystery companion, my simple kind of man; you are my world.