Zamographies, July 2-3, 2020 (postponed)

DUE TO THE CURRENT GLOBAL PANDEMIC WE HAVE DECIDED TO CANCEL OUR FACE TO FACE ANNUAL CONGRESS, AND ORGANIZE ONE ONLINE ON THE SAME DATE OF JULY 1 & 2, 8:30 PM, Madrid Time. COME BACK TO THIS PAGE FOR MORE INFO.

City of Zamora, Spain

Call for Participation

                                                                           Our 2020 annual meeting wants to explore different Jewish branches of the Zamora last name, transliteration included, for example, Zamiro, Zamory, Zamir, Zmiro, Zamero, Zamorano*, in Spain and abroad. 

Genealogy, and the stories around it, allow us to explore itineraries across time and space; our goal is to present live connections among people researching their Jewish ancestry.   

Zamora had an important Jewish population in the Middle Ages, specially between the 11^th and the 15^th centuries. The first Zamora last name is registered for philosopher, and Kabbalist Abraham ben Solomon of Zamora (13^th century), well known to his peers during his time.

  

Before and after 1492, this toponymic last name was used by judeocoversos, including Gabriel of Zamora, trialled by the inquisition in Seville 1481 (First seizure of marranos), and Alfonso of Zamora, founder of the Hebrew Language Studies at University of Salamanca (16th century), and later professor at Alcala de Henares. At the end of his life, he called himself “the last sage of Sefarad” (reference in Spanish).           

We invite you to share this Call for Participation with all persons interested in this topic. Enrollment is open to the public and, like every year, it covers several related events and activities like visit to historic Jewish Quarters, book presentations, Sephardic culinary demonstration, concerts and more.

For updates in the coming months you should visit this page or if you have questions, you can email us at centrocampanton@gmail.com or send a WhatsApp to +34 609 740 116

*Transliterations are changes in the word with the same linguistic root (Zam), for example: Zambrano, Zamatto, Zamero, Zamerro, Zamie, Zamlug, Zamra, Zamor, Zamorani, etc. In Portuguese language, Z usually changes to S. Here reference for Zamora last name at The Museum of the Jewish People (click here)


To know more about our previous events, see the pages with summaries: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII

Auschwitz, by León Felipe (Tábara, Zamora, 1884 – Mexico City, 1968)

To all Jews in the world,  my friends, my brethren

Those infernal poets,

Dante, Blake, Rimbaud…

keep it quiet…

don’t play so loud…

Shut up!

Any inhabitant of Earth today

knows more about Hell

than those three poets together.

I am sure Dante plays his violin very well

Oh, what a virtuoso!...

But he shouldn’t pretend now,

with his wonderful tercets, 

and his perfect hendecasyllables,

to scare that Jewish boy who has been ripped

from his parents;

he is alone.

Alone!

waiting for his turn

in the crematories of Auschwitz.

Dante… you descended deep into the Inferno

guided by Virgil’s hand 

(Virgil, “Gran Cicerone”),

your Divine Comedy was a funny adventure

of music and tourism.

This is different… something else.

How should I explain it?  

if you don’t have imagination!

You… don’t have any imagination,

remember, in your Inferno

there is not a single boy

and the one you see there…

is alone.

He is alone! With no Cicerone…

waiting for the gates of Hell to open, 

a hell that you, poor Florentine,

could not have even imagined it.

This is different, let me explain. 

Look! This is a place where nobody

can play a violin;

all the violin strings in the world will break here. 

Do you understand that, Infernal Poets?

Virgil, Dante, Blake, Rimbaud…

keep it quite!

Don’t play so loud... Shh!...

Shut up!

I am also a great violinist

and I have played in Hell many times…

But now, here

I break my violin… and remain silent.  

  

Listen to the poem read in Spanish by León Felipe (click here)

Translation into English: Jesús Jambrina

Touchstone, Art & Literature Magazine, Vol. 82

Viterbo University, La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA

León Felipe (Zamora, 1884 – Mexico City, 1968) is considered one of the major poets of the Spanish language in the twentieth century. He was also a playwright, and translator of American writers Walt Whitman and Waldo Frank. He graduated from Pharmacy, which brought him a nomadic life by working in different cities and towns. In 1920 León Felipe published his first poetry book in Madrid, titled The Walker’s Verses and Prayers. Soon after, he traveled to Equatorial Guinea to work at a hospital, and in 1922 he went for the first time to Mexico from where he visited the United States, and Panama. 

In 1936, León Felipe returned to Spain to fight in favor of the Spanish Republic against Francisco Franco’s fascist insurrection. In 1939, after a brief visit to France and Cuba, he returned to Mexico where he lived in exile until his death in 1968. 

León Felipe’s literary style was strongly prophetic with Biblical and Whitmanian influences, meaning a strong humanistic orientation. His writings delve deep into historical thinking as a call for a hopeful and socially just world. Since the arrival of democracy to Spain in 1975, León Felipe’s poetry has been valued as a testimony of the exiles during the Spanish Civil War; many of his poems have been musicalized,  and are greatly appreciated in both sides of the Atlantic as part of the Spanish American literary tradition.

 In 2002, the Zamora City Council in Spain acquired León Felipe’s original manuscripts, including many unpublished works, as the foundation for a future center of studies that will have his name. In 2010 the prestigious Spanish press Visor put in circulation the–so far–most complete collection of his poems. “Auschwitz” is included in the book Oh! This Old and Broken Violin(1965).