Michael Alpert will be talking about Elia Karmona's novel, La Muzher Onesta (1924), which he translated from Ladino into English under the title of 'The Chaste Wife'.
'The Chaste Wife' is a novelette, typical although perhaps superior to the majority of several hundred novels published in Ladino, the Medieval Spanish. It tells a story of a husband's irrational suspicion of his wife's infidelity, his attempts to test her chastity by sending successive men to seduce her, and his ultimate failure and her triumph in persuading him that she does not need to be tested and that the husband's insistence may well bring about the result that he fears.
Michael Alpert is the President of the Jewish Historical Society of England and Professor Emeritus of the History of Spain at the University of Westminster. He has two major interests: the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and the history of Spanish Jews before and after the Expulsion.

Special Guests of the Evening:
Hilary Pomeroy--lecturer in the culture of Sephardic Jewry at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies (UCL). She will speak about women and marriage in Ladino ballads.
Monica Acosta--exquisite singer from Colombia, who will give a concert of Sephardic songs.