Yakob Yoná

Yakob Abraham Yoná was a renowned collector, writer, and publisher of Ladino koplas (couplets) and Sephardic folklore. Born in the southern European reaches of the Ottoman Empire in Monastir (today Bitola, North Macedonia), he spent his life in Salonika, the great capital of Ottoman Sephardic culture. In addition to his literary output, Yoná worked as a combibador, a Sephardic messenger sent to invite guests to celebrations through an oral performance, often with spontaneous poetry. The numerous chapbooks of Ladino ballads he printed attracted the attention of the celebrated Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Yoná’s koplas, originally a genre of rabbinic poetry for the masses, include a discussion of the 1910 visitation of Halley’s Comet, which came into naked-eye view in mid-April. Like many sensationalist publications, Yoná’s poem interprets the comet’s appearance as an omen of wars and other divinely wrought calamities to make people return to God’s ways.