Chicken-Footed Demons and Synagogue Shouting: Venezuelan Sephardic Life with Joseph Bendahan

Meet Joseph Bendahan, a nuclear physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. Joseph details his family’s Sephardic roots in the Moroccan cities of Tetouan and Ouezzane before their migration to South America. Reflecting on the endangerment of his ancestral language, Haketia, he describes how the mix of Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic thrived in Venezuela’s unique social environment. Joseph highlights vivid folklore like the chicken-footed dembajos and expressive phrases like se te caiga el mazzal, illustrating how even his Ashkenazi friends adopted these colorful Sephardic words on the playground.Heritage Words - conversations about the words we inherit and the meaning they bring to our lives - is produced by the HUC Jewish Language Project and HUC Connect.Host and producer: Sarah Bunin BenorAssistant producer: Kyle Elbaz FingerhutEditor: Avishay ArtsyVideo editor: Talia EhrenbergTheme music: Maurice El Medioni’s French and Algerian Judeo-Arabic album “Cafe Oran,” featuring the Klezmatics’ David Krakauer and Frank London, courtesy of Piranha Records.