Moabet

Moabet (מואביט) is a Ladino (or Judeo-Spanish) term that means essentially “intimate conversation.” It is not only a Ladino word: moabet draws its meaning from the broader Eastern Mediterranean cultural contexts in which Jews have been embedded for generations. The term stems from Ottoman Turkish (محبت‎ – muhabbet), which in turn comes from Arabic (مَحَبَّة‎ – maḥabba). Maḥabba literally means love—love of the soul. We express this love, in other words, through the deep connections that form through conversation with others. This column is dedicated to moabet—and to the voices and concerns of various communities of Sepharadim past, present, and future; it is a space where the cultures and histories of Mediterranean peoples can be explored in the mode of moabet—meandering and lingering, revealing new insights and perspectives into occluded pasts and imagined futures.