Welcoming Shabbat in Ladino with Sarah Aroeste Singing Buen Shabat

Tonight we welcome Shabbat with Buen Shabat, a lively song in the Ladino language, sung by Sarah Aroeste who, inspired by her family's Sephardic roots in N. Macedonia and Greece, has spent the last two decades bringing her contemporary vision for Sephardic culture- through music and books- to audiences around the world.  

Aroeste writes and sings in Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish dialect that originated by Spanish Jews after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Those who left Spain, including Aroeste’s family, carried the medieval language with them to the various points where they later settled, primarily along the Mediterranean coast and North Africa. In time, Ladino came to absorb bits and pieces of languages all along the Mediterranean coast, including some Greek, Turkish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Hebrew, and more.

This exotic pan-Mediterranean language has, unfortunately, been fading away. But the continued musical legacy of Spanish Jews highlights the strength of an oral tradition that spans centuries and crosses many geographic boundaries.

American born and trained in classical opera as a teenager at Westminster Choir College and then at Yale University, Aroeste became drawn to her Sephardic musical past after spending a summer in 1997 performing at the Israel Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv.  There, she had the fortune of studying with Nico Castel, one of the world’s great Ladino singers and coaches at the Metropolitan Opera, with whom she learned she shared a similar Sephardic background.  Continuing to study with Castel upon her return to the US, Aroeste started incorporating classical Ladino songs into her opera repertoire. She quickly realized that Ladino, not opera, was her true musical passion and soon after made the leap to studying Ladino full time.

Since then, Aroeste has been a vocal advocate for exposing new audiences to Sephardic culture and has worked tirelessly to keep Ladino alive for a new generation. Aroeste is one of few Ladino composers today who writes her own music, and whether with her original compositions or with interpreting Ladino folk repertoire, she has developed a signature style combining traditional Mediterranean Sephardic sounds with contemporary influences such as rock, pop and jazz.

Sarah sings with participation from Alan Franco and Berkshire Salsa, and members of the Latino and Jewish communities of the Berkshires, Massachusetts.

Enjoy, and Shabbat shalom!

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