"Sontinuity: Letters, Sounds and Judeo-Spanish Epistemologies of Being"

is article explores the epistemological and ontological significance of Judeo-Spanish sound as a medium of Sephardi continuity, or sontinuity. rough sound studies, it examines how post-expulsion Sephardim preserved and reimagined identity through voice, song, and recording. Using two case studies—David ben Moshe Attias’s La Guerta de Oro (1778) and early twentieth-century EMI recordings—the study analyzes how Sephardi sonic practices negotiated between Ottoman concepts of destiny (a la Turka) and Western rationality (a la Franka). Drawing on Barthes, Derrida, and Lévi-Strauss, Elbaz argues that Sephardi vocality functions as both memory and thought, transmitting knowledge through vibration, breath, and resonance. e Sephardi voice becomes a phenomenology of endurance, transforming sound into a living archive of belonging. Ultimately, sontinuity articulates how the act of sounding sustains Sephardi being, linking linguistic expression, spiritual inheritance, and communal persistence across time.