Rebecca Levy; Wrote Book on Ethnic Jews

Rebecca Amato Levy, Sephardic Jewish historian who wrote the important book “I Remember Rhodes” about her ethnicity’s heritage, has died. She was 89.

Levy died Saturday at the Beverly Hills home of her daughter, Mati Franco, according to Rabbi Daniel Bouskila of Temple Tifereth Israel, the group’s largest Los Angeles synagogue.

The rabbi called Levy a “matriarch and unique personality” whose encyclopedic knowledge of the roots of Sephardic Jews caused her to be sought out by Jewish historians, anthropologists, linguists, students and filmmakers for more than five decades.

Levy was the subject of and appeared in the 1995 documentary film “Island of Roses--The Jews of Rhodes in Los Angeles,” made by her grandson, filmmaker Gregori Viens. The documentary, based partially on Levy’s 1986 book, was shown nationally by ABC in 1999.

Sephardic Jews are descended from Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula (the word “Sepharad” means Iberian in ancient Hebrew) in 1492 following the Spanish Inquisition. They are known for their spicy and exotic cuisines, lyrical and dissonant music with Arabic elements, liturgical customs emphasizing poetry and song, and a strong ideology in living as “moral and ethical beings.” About 10% of America’s Jews are Sephardic, residing primarily in New York and Los Angeles, which has an estimated Sephardic population of 100,000.

Levy, an entertaining raconteur, also was revered for her culinary and linguistic talents as well as her long memory of the group’s--and her family’s--roots.

Born on the Mediterranean island of Rhodes, now Greek but Italian at the time, Levy fled with her first husband, Moshe Hasson, in 1939 under threats from Italian fascists. Remaining Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps in Poland, and Rhodes now has no Jewish community.

The young refugee couple moved first to Marseille, France, and then Tangier, Morocco, where daughter Mati was born in 1943 and Hasson died the following year. The young widow brought her child to Los Angeles in 1946.

Here she married Victor Levy, a Sephardic American veteran of World War II. He died in 1974.

Levy wrote her historic memoir, which Bouskila called “the seminal book about the Sephardic Jews of Rhodes,” in Ladino, the Sephardic Jewish language, which is an amalgam of 15th century Spanish with bits of Hebrew, Italian, Turkish and Greek. The multilingual Levy also spoke Greek, Turkish, Italian, Hebrew, French and English.

Levy is survived by her daughter, Mati Franco; two stepchildren, Marlene Henerson and William Levy; two grandsons; and one great-granddaughter.

A funeral service is scheduled at noon today at Home of Peace Memorial Park, 4334 Whittier Blvd., Los Angeles, followed by a traditional ceremony at the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel.